The Cereal Murders

“Ah, Goldy the caterer?” said Father Olson.

“Oh, Lord!” I gargled into the mouthpiece. “Who told you?”

“Er – “

“I mean, how could you have found out? It was just last night!”

“What?”

I pressed my face into my pillow and knew better than to speak. An awkward silence ensued while I involuntarily recalled the Sunday school teaching on sexual activity between single adults – “… either single and celibate or married and faithful.”

Oh well. The silence lengthened. Father Olson cleared his throat.

I sat up gingerly, wondering if priests were frequently greeted with early morning guilt. Maybe they learned to ignore it. After a minute, Father Olson resumed a normal tone. “I’m sorry to call so early, Goldy. Ahh . . but I have an all-day clergy meeting in Denver, and I wanted to give you the final count on Friday’s luncheon board meeting. There’ll be twelve of us.”

I swallowed hard. “Twelve. How biblical.”

“Can you tell me the menu? Because of our theological discussion.”

“Fish,” I said succinctly. When I didn’t elaborate, he mumbled something that was not a blessing, and disconnected. The phone immediately rang again. I flopped back down on the mattress. Why me?

“Come to Aspen Meadow,” intoned Marla’s husky voice, “the promiscuity capital of the western United States.”

I rolled over and peered blearily at the early morning grayness. Clouds shrouded the distant mountains like a woolen blanket.

“I don’t know why George Orwell bothered to write 1984. He obviously never had to live in a small town, where Big Brother is a fact of life.”

“So you’re not going to deny it?” Marla demanded.

“I’m not saying anything. Tell me why you’re calling so early.”

“In case you’re wondering how I suspected that something was up, so to speak, my dear, I called your fellow I like so much, that teen housemate-helper – “

“His name is Julian.”

“Yes, well, I called you numerous times last night and got young Julian, who, as I say, is somewhat more forthright than his employer. He said your calendar didn’t show any catering assignments.” She stopped to take a noisy bite of something. “When he still knew nothing at eleven, but was obviously quite besieged with worry, I thought, This is our early-to-bed, early-to-work much-beloved town caterer?” She took time out to chew, then added, “Besides, if you’d been in an accident, I would have heard before now.”

“How reassuring. Marla, I have a full day of cooking ahead, and so – “

“Tut-tut, not so fast, tell me what’s going on in your love life. I don’t want to hear about it from anyone else.”

Well, you’re not going to hear about it from me, either. I laughed lightly and replied, “Everything you suspect is true. And more.”

“From the wounded warrior, Miss Cut and Chaste? I don’t think so.”

“Look. I had dinner with Schulz. Let me reflect a little bit before I have to analyze the relationship to death, okay?”

That seemed to satisfy her. “All right. Go cook. But when you take a break, I have some real news for you concerning the Elk Park preppies. Unless you want it now, of course.”

This was so typical of her. “Make it fast and simple,” I said. “I haven’t had any caffeine yet.”

“Don’t complain to me that you’re still in bed, when you could be trying to figure out what’s going on out at Colorado’s premier prep school. All right-that German pseudo-academic guy out there? The one who wrote the Faust dissertation?”

“Egon Schlichtmaier. What about him?”

“He helped you with that dinner, right?”

“He did. I don’t know much about him.”

“Well, I do, because he’s single and has therefore been the subject of the usual background investigation from the women in step aerobics.”

I shook my head. How women at the Aspen Meadow Athletic Club could manage to step up, down, and sideways at dizzying speeds while trading voluminous amounts of news and gossip was one of the wonders of modern-physiology. Yet it was done, regularly and enthusiastically.

I ordered, “Go ahead.”

“Egon Schlichtmaier is twenty-seven years old,” Marla rattled on, “but he and his family immigrated to this country when there was still a Berlin Wall, in the seventies. Despite his problems learning English, Herr Schlichtmaier got a good education, including a Ph.D. in literature from dear old c.o. in Boulder. But poor Egon was unable to get a college teaching job.”

“So what else is new? I heard the ratio of humanities doctorates to available jobs is about ten to one.”

“Let me finish. Egon Schlichtmaier is also extremely good-looking. He works out with weights and has a body to die for.”

I conjured up a mental picture of the history teacher. He was short, which meant I could look right into his olive-toned baby face with its big brown eyes. He had curly black hair and long black eyelashes, and whenever I had seen him he had been wearing khaki pants, an oxford-cloth shirt in some pastel shade, and a fashionable jacket. Ganymede meets Ralph Lauren.

“What else?” The lack of coffee was beginning to get to me. Besides, and I was astonished that I even had this thought, Schulz might be trying to reach me.

“All right, here’s the scoop… he was a teaching assistant at C.O., and he was caught having affairs with no less than three female undergraduates. At the same time. Which is his business, I guess, except that the word got around at the Modern Language Association convention. The universities, when they got wind of it, wouldn’t offer him a job scrubbing floors. Seems they thought the last thing they needed was a prof who would cause trouble among tuition-paying undergraduates.”

Since I was no longer what we would call pristine in the lust department, I avoided judgment. But three at a time? Consecutively or simultaneously? I said, “Did all the academics from coast to coast know these details?”

“The way I heard it, only the hiring schools knew.” She chewed some more of whatever it was. “The headmaster at Elk Park Prep owed the head of the C.U. comparative literature department a favor from some kid the department chairman helped to get into C.U., so Perkins hired Egon Schlichtmaier as a kind of interim thing to teach U.S. history. Mind you, this was after he had fired another American history teacher, a Miss Pamela Samuelson, over some unknown scandal last year. This year Egon was supposed to keep looking for a college teaching job.”

“Miss Samuelson? Miss Pamela Samuelson? Why is that name familiar?”

“Pamela Samuelson was in your aerobics class before you quit the club, dummy.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, still unable to conjure up a face. “What about Egon Schlichtmaier’s history with the female undergraduates? How could Perkins justify having that kind of guy around?”

Marla sighed gustily. “Come on, Goldy. First of all, as you and I both know, if nobody squeals about how awful a guy is, then his reputation remains intact.”

“So the undergraduates weren’t talking. And the news didn’t outlive the MLA convention?”

“Apparently not. And if anybody else did find out, I think the spin Perkins was looking for was that this was youthful excess that people would soon forget if the issue were left alone. The word is, Perkins warned Egon not to get involved with the preppie females, or he’d be teaching French to the longhorn steers down at the stock show. And there’s no evidence Egon went after anyone who wasn’t close to his own age. More on that later. Here’s the problem. How willing do you think a college would be to hire Schlichtmaier if his background were exposed in a series of articles for the Mountain Journal by an ambitious student-reporter aiming to spice up his application to the Columbia School of Journalism?”

“No, no, not Keith Andrews…”

“The same. And guess who was trying to get Keith not to publish the articles? Your dear Julian!”

“Oh, God. Are you sure?”

“So I hear. And guess who was sleeping with Schlichtmaier until she supposedly heard the whole background thing from none other than her favorite student, Keith Andrews?”

“I can’t imagine, but I know you’re going to tell me.”

“Mademoiselle Suzanne Ferrell. I don’t know whether they have broken up irreparably, but I’m supposed to find out at the nine o’clock step class.”

“Tell me about this unknown scandal with Miss… who was Schlichtmaier’s predecessor?”

“Pamela Samuelson, I told you.”

“Could you check on it? I’d like to get together with her.”

“She’s moved to another aerobics class, so it’ll be tough.”

“Okay, let me tell Schulz all this.” Marla giggled suggestively. “Really, I just told this story so you’d have an excuse to call him this morning.”

She rang off with the promise that she would do all this snooping if I paid her in cookies. I promised her Chocolate-Dipped Biscotti, and she swooned.

I did my yoga, then reflected on the communications network in Aspen Meadow as I dressed. When the town developed from a mountain resort to a place where people lived year-round, the first social institution had been the fire department. In a climate so dry a fire could consume acres of forest in less than a blink, the need for mutual protection had drawn even rugged loners into social contact. With the weather and roads unpredictable in winter, now it was the telephone that people used to tell everything about everybody. That is, if you didn’t have the benefit of step aerobics. But sometimes I would hear so much news about somebody that the next time I saw the person in question, he would look as if he’d aged. Egon Schlichtmaier could easily sprout gray hairs in the next week, and I would never notice.

By the time I got downstairs, the sky had turned the color of charcoal and was beginning to spit flakes of snow onto the pine trees around my house. But the enveloping grayness brought no dark mood. In fact, I realized suddenly, I felt fabulous. The weather was a quilt over a delicious inner coziness. I didn’t want to admit-to Marla, Schulz, Arch, even to myself – what this new state was, but it felt a lot like falling in you-know-what.

Seeing Arch and Julian in the kitchen, however, gave me a jolt of alarm. Julian’s skin was as ashen as the sky outside, and the pouches under his eyes were deep smudges. When we lived and worked at a client’s house over the summer, he went to bed early, was up at six to swim his laps, shower, and dress carefully before setting off for Elk Park Prep. I couldn’t remember when he’d taken the time to swim in the week since Keith’s murder. This morning he looked as if he had had no sleep at all, and he was wearing the same rumpled clothes from the night before. I was beginning to wonder if living with us was the best thing for him. But I didn’t want to get him upset by asking more questions, so I just gave Arch, who was dressed in three layers of green shirts complemented by dark green jeans, a cheery smile. Arch smiled back gleefully.

“Julian’s heating his special chocolate croissants!” he announced. “He says we don’t have time for anything else!” To my look of dismay, Arch added, “Come on, Mom. Have one with your espresso.”

While a chocolate croissant would hardly be Headmaster Perkins’ idea of a nutritious breakfast, I quickly surrendered. Julian was not just a good cook, he was an artist. He had the touch with food and the love of culinary creation that are truly rare, and he’d had early and excellent experience as an assisting pastry chef at his father’s bakery in Bluff, Utah. Given his preference for healthful food, his experimentation with puff pastry was a delightful aberration. In helping with my business, Julian had turned out to be worth his weight in Beluga caviar. Or radicchio, which he would prefer. But I knew he had a calculus midterm that afternoon, and I didn’t want him to be bustling around making breakfast in addition to everything else.

“Julian, let me do this,” I said gently.

“Just let me finish!” he said gruffly. He pulled a cookie sheet from the oven. The golden-brown pastry cylinders oozed melted chocolate.

I was saved from having to deal with Julian’s hostility by the phone.

“Goldilocks’ Catering – “

“Feeling good?”

“Yes, yes.”

“How about this, then,” Tom Schulz said. “Are you feeling great?” I could hear his grin. Unfortunately, I could also feel myself blush.”

“Of course, what do you expect?” Something about my tone caused both Arch and Julian to turn inquiring faces in my direction. I turned away from them, coloring furiously. “Where are you?”

“At work, drinking probably the worst coffee known to the human species. When can I see you again?”

I wanted that to be soon, and I needed to tell him Marla’s news, but I wasn’t going to say so in front of Julian. “Lunch? Can you come up here? Aspen Meadow Café?”

“If you call the entrées that they serve at that place lunch, then sure. Noon.” And with that summary judgment of nouvelle cuisine, he rang off.

“Arch,” I said when we were all munching the marvelous croissants, “you didn’t tell me you called Torn Schulz about the snake.”

Arch put down his croissant. “Mom,” he said with his earnest voice and look. “What, do you really think I’m going to rely on Mr. Perkins to do anything for me? Come on.”

“Boy, you got that right,” Julian mumbled.

“Still,” I insisted as gently as possible, “I want you to be careful today. Promise?”

He chirped, “Maybe I should just stay home from school.”

“Come on, buster. Just keep everything in your bookbag. Don’t even use your locker.”

Julian lowered his eyebrows, and his mouth tightened stubbornly.

“Hey, I didn’t put the snake in his locker,” I said defensively. “I despise vipers, rodents, and spiders. Detest them. Ask Arch.”

“She does,” said Arch without being asked. “I can’t have hamsters or gerbils. I can’t even have an ant farm.” He swallowed the last bite of his croissant, wiped his mouth, and got up from the table. “You should add insects to that list.”

Arch clomped upstairs to finish getting ready for school. As soon as he was gone, Julian leaned toward me conspiratorially. His haggard face made my heart ache.

“I’m going to help him with his classes. You know, set up a study schedule, encourage him, like that. We’re going to work in the dining room each night, if that’s okay with you. There’s more room there.”

“Julian, you do not have time to – “

My phone rang again. It was going to be one of those days.

“Let me get it.” Julian jumped up and grabbed the receiver, but instead of giving my business greeting, he said, “Yeah?”

I certainly hoped it was not an Aspen Meadow Country Club client. Julian mouthed, “Greer Dawson,” and I shook my head.

Julian said, “What? You’re kidding.” Silence. “Oh, well, I’m busy anyway.” Then he handed me the phone and said “Bitch” under his breath.

I said, “Yes, Greer, what can I do for you?”

Her voice was high, stiff, formal. “I’ve developed a new raspberry preserve I’d like you to try, Goldy.. It’s … exquisite. We want you to use it in a Linzertorte that you could make for the cafe.”

“Oh, really? Who’s we?”

She tsked.

“Let me think about it, Greer.”

“Well, how long will that take? I need to know before the end of the school day so I can put it on my application that I have to get in the mail.”

“Put what on your application?”

“That I developed a commercially successful recipe for raspberry preserve.”

I detest ultimatums, especially those delivered before eight o’clock in the morning. “Tell your mother I’ll stop into the cafe kitchen just before noon to try it out and talk to her about it.” Without waiting for an answer, I hung up. My croissant was cold. I turned to Julian. “What are you mad at her about?”

“We were supposed to be partners in quizzing each other before the SATs. I didn’t do as well as I wanted to last year, too nervous, I guess, so I really wanted to, you know, review. Miss Ferrell” – he pronounced the name with the profound disgust of the young – “says we shouldn’t need this kind of cramming, but she encouraged us to go over a few things anyway. I quizzed Greer yesterday. But instead of quizzing me, Greer has to rush down to Denver for her last session of private SAT review.” His shoulders slumped. “Oh, well. It’ll give me more time to get started with Arch. We can use the school library.”

“Why don’t you go to the SAT review with Greer?” I asked innocently.

He pushed his chair back from the table. “Where am I supposed to get a thousand bucks?”

It was a rhetorical question, and we both knew it. But before I could say that I would be more than happy to quiz him myself, Julian slammed out of the kitchen.

9

After the boys left, I fixed a cup of espresso and took it out on the deck off the kitchen. Only a few pillows of white now floated across the sky. The heavy, dark clouds had passed after dropping less than an inch of snow. I brushed melting snow and ice off a redwood bench with one towel and sat on another. It was really too cold to be outside, but the air felt invigorating. In the deep blue of the sky, the sun shone. The snow heaped on each tree branch glittered like mounds of sugar.

It was the kind of moment where you wanted every clock and watch in the galaxy to stop. Yes, someone had horribly murdered Keith Andrews. And someone was threatening us; Arch was having trouble in school; loads of bookkeeping, cooking, and cleaning awaited me. I had people to call, food to order, schedules to set. But for the moment, that could all wait. I inhaled snow-chilled air. The espresso tasted marvelously strong and rich. One thing I had learned in the past few years was that when the great moments came, you should stop and enjoy them, because they weren’t going to last.

And then the flowers began to arrive. First there were pots of freesias. Papery white, yellow, and purple blossoms filled my hall and kitchen with their delicate sweet scent. Then came daisies with heather and an enormous basket of gladiolus, astromeria, and snapdragons. Finally, the florist handed me a box of long-stemmed scarlet roses. He didn’t know the occasion and looked to me for signals about whether to act sad or happy. I didn’t give any clues, so the fellow remained stony-faced. They must teach you to be emotionally removed in florist school. I arranged the roses in a tall ceramic vase Arch had made in the same sixth-grade art class that had produced the woodcut at Schulz’s. My kitchen smelled like a florist’s refrigerator.

The phone rang. Apparently Schulz couldn’t wait to see if the greenhouse had begun to arrive.

I trilled, “Goldilocks’ Florist – “

“Huh? Goldy? You okay?”

Audrey Coopersmith.

“No,” I said without missing a beat, “I need you to come help me. You see, after dealing with all these fruitcakes, I’ve gone nuts.”

There was a pause. Tentatively, Audrey began, “Want me to call back in a little bit?”

Depressed people, especially those going through divorce, have a hard time with jokes. They need humor, but it’s like a bank account that has been suddenly frozen. Still, I would be the last one to explain.

“Well, uh,” Audrey continued, floundering, “we’ve got a bit of a problem. Headmaster Perkins just called. He was wondering if we could bring out some cookies around lunchtime. They’re having an unofficial visit from the Stanford rep.”

“Sorry to say,” I replied happily, “I’m busy for lunch.”

“But Goldy” – and there was a distinct whine in her voice – “I can help you. And I think it would be such a great experience for Heather to meet the Stanford representative. You see, Carl doesn’t care at all about where she goes to school, so I’m the one left with the responsibility … can’t you just help me with this? I’m really going through a bad time now… it’s not that big a deal for you, probably, but…”

Heather? What did Heather have to do with the cookies? I had to bake in order to pave the way for Heather Coopersmith to interview for the college of her dreams – correction, her mother’s dreams?

“Look, Audrey, I’m in a good mood and I’m trying to stay that way. Why didn’t Perkins call me himself? I could give the school some ideas about snacks for the Stanford rep.”

“He said he tried to call you earlier but your line was busy. I’m telling you, Goldy, he’s willing to pay for at least six dozen, and I can help by taking them over to the school, with Heather, of course, and the rep – ” She hesitated. “You just don’t understand: Stanford never sends a rep to Elk Park Prep. They figure they don’t need to – “

“So give the guy some frozen yogurt! Tell him to pretend he’s in northern California!”

Audrey sighed bleakly and said nothing. I guess I wasn’t acting like a caterer who wanted business, was I? I made a few rapid calculations. Okay, there was the Rocky Mountain Stanford Club, maybe they’d need a big catered luncheon sometime. And Stanford played the University of Colorado in football, so perhaps I could rustle up a tailgate affair in Boulder this fall or next. Impressing the rep might not be such a bad idea.

“All right,” I said. “How about some granola?” Audrey’s silence remained disapproving. “Just kidding. Look, I’ll come up with something. But Perkins needs to make very clear to this guy the name of the caterer making the cookies. And you can also tell Perkins this is going to cost him. Six dozen cookies arranged on trays and delivered, thirty dollars.”

“I’m sure he won’t object. He even asked if you could make a red and white cookie. You know, Stanford colors. He was thinking”-and here she cleared her throat-“of something like, like… barber-pole cookies or … dough candy canes or – “

“One of these days, that guy is going to choke and they’ll do CPR on his tongue.”

Audrey said, “Is that a joke?”

“Also,” I added firmly, “I can’t bring the cookies out to the school because of this lunch engagement.”

“But that’s what I told you. Where are you going to be today? I can pick them up. The logistics are getting a bit complicated anyway – “

“What logistics?”

She took another deep breath and I prepared for a lengthy explanation. “Oh, well, the Marenskys heard from Perkins that the Stanford rep was coming, and they’d already been in to complain to him that Ferrell hadn’t put Stanford on Brad Marensky’s college list, not that he would ever have a chance of getting in there, he’s fifth in the class, you know… let’s see…” She trailed off. “Logistics,” I said gently, to get her back on track. “Oh, yes, well. So Perkins told me he called the Marenskys – no doubt because they’re such big donors to the school, although Perkins didn’t mention that – and said Brad should be sure to see the Stanford rep today, and Rhoda Marensky demanded that they get a private audience with the guy – “

The pope from Palo Alto. I could just imagine this young fellow, entirely unaware of the intense power plays that his unannounced visit was engendering, or of the awesome authority currently being conferred on his head.

” – so the Marenskys are picking up the rep at the I-70 exit and driving him to the school, or at least they were until the Dawsons got wind of this private-interview bit, and they insisted that Greer get to meet with the fellow before the reception ever began – “

If in fact it ever did begin, I mentally amended. “And then Miss Ferrell thought she’d better be present to arbitrate, so she gave her fourth period a study hall, which is when Heather has French, so of course I wanted her to meet the rep, since she did all that extra engineering work over the summer, and if they didn’t have such a high percentage of minorities at that school, I think it’s forty-seven percent, then she would be a top contender – “

“What is the bottom line here, Audrey?”

“What are you so upset about?” she asked, bewildered. “Where’s your lunch get-together? I’ll pick up the cookies, and bring Heather to meet the Stanford rep, and Miss Ferrell can be there at the same time – “

“I’ll be at Aspen Meadow Cafe to taste jam at 11:45.”

“To taste jam? Why not do that at home?”

“Well you may ask, my dear Audrey, but it’s the Dawsons’ idea. No doubt they’ll also want you to taste some. I’m sure they will want Julia Child, Paul Bocuse, and the Stanford rep to taste it too.”

She sniffed. “Well, that doesn’t really make much sense, but I’ll see. Oh, something else. The Tattered Cover folks think it might be a good idea for you to come down to the store early, maybe an hour before the signing Halloween night? I could show you where the third-floor kitchenette is, how they usually set up for a buffet, that kind of thing.”

At last we were off the subject of the Stanford rep. Yes, I said, we should definitely case the third floor of the bookstore ahead of time. We decided Audrey would come over to my place after the penitential luncheon Friday so we could head down to Denver together. Then Audrey asked, “Why did you answer the phone like a florist? Are you thinking of expanding your business?”

“Sorry, I thought you were somebody else.”

“… Not meaning to be disrespectful, Goldy, but maybe you need a vacation.”

That made two of us. I was still laughing when Tom Schulz called.

“Doesn’t the caterer sound merry.”

“She is, she is. First she had a great time with this cop last night.” He mm-hmmed. I went on. “This morning, though, she flunked out of surrogate-parenting. But to her rescue came this same cop, who quickly turned her house into the Denver Botanic Garden. Now for the rest of the day she has to make cookies, kowtow to some guy from California, taste jam, and have lunch with the cop.”

“Uh-huh. Sounds normal to me. Glad you like the flowers.”

“Love them. You are too generous. But listen, I need to tell you some stuff Marla’s found out.” I told him about Egon Schlichtmaier’s allegedly shabby history and current alleged affair, along with the possibility that these items were going to get some journalistic exposure at the hands of the ambitious Keith Andrews.

“Okay, look,” he said when I’d finished, “I may be a bit late for lunch. I’m going 90wn to check on a murder in Lakewood. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t involve me. But the victim’s name was Andrews.”

I was instantly sober. “Any relation to the late valedictorian?”

“Not that we can figure out. The victim’s name was Kathy. They found her body in a field two weeks ago. Her head had been bashed in. Suspect is her ex-boyfriend, who owed her a couple thousand, but the investigators down there can’t find him. Anyway, one of the things they’re looking at is that Kathy Andrews’ mail was stolen. And get this – she had an account at Neiman-Marcus. ‘K Andrews’ on her card, they said.’

“I don’t get it. Was it a robbery/murder?”

“That’s the strange thing. Kathy Andrews was single, had a lot of money that she liked to spend. Looks like a lot of her mail might have been stolen, from the way she was complaining to the local post office. Maybe somebody was in the act of stealing letters and she caught them. That’s what the Lakewood guys are trying to reconstruct.”

“Why would someone steal her mail?”

“Same reason they take your purse, Miss G. For cash or checks, is what we usually see. Or vandalism. They’re going through all Kathy Andrews’ stuff, trying to check back with what she might have been expecting. But when something that was mailed-in this case a credit card-doesn’t show up, you wonder. According to their records, Neiman-Marcus mailed it sometime in the last month.”

I touched the phone wire, then quickly let go of it., I tried to wipe out the mental image of a woman I did not know. Kathy Andrews. “Did you talk to the Marenskys about their raccoon coat?”

“They claim it was stolen at some party.”

“Well, I’m confused.”

“You’re not alone, Miss G. See you around noon.”

Something red and white. Not a barber pole, not a candy cane, not an embarrassed zebra. Something worthy of a visit from the school that had produced Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, Jim Plunkett, and John Elway.

Since I thought a football-shaped cookie would be a bit too difficult to manage on such short notice, I decided on a rich white cookie with a red center. I beat butter with cream cheese and let my mind wander back to Julian. His abrupt departure that morning left me troubled. Julian, in his fourth year at Elk Park Prep, was bright and extremely competent. He had stunned me with the creativity of his project on DNA research. But his classmates were smart and productive too, and they had money to aid them in all their academic pursuits. I creamed in sugar and then swirled in dark, exotic-smelling Mexican vanilla, which I sniffed heartily. Julian cared about his school, not with a rah-rah cheerleader spirit, but with such a fierce loyalty that he was willing to risk a fight with Keith Andrews to keep a scandal out of the newspapers. I sifted flour in to make a stiff batter. Julian was passionate about people and cooking. The latter trait, I had long ago decided, was another way of being passionate about people. For all those therapy bills, I’d figured out a few things.

As my spatula scraped the golden batter off the sides of the bowl, I recalled the shy and happy look that had begun to creep over Julian’s usually hostile face during the past summer, whenever Schulz or Arch or I had begged him to make his tortellini della panna, spinach pie in filo, or fudge with sun-dried cherries. Julian cared about me and about Schulz, and he was wild about Arch. The events of the past week had caused him great strain. Poor overwrought eighteen-year-old, I thought, what can I do to help you care less about us and more about your future?

Red ‘n’ Whites

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 3-ounce package cream cheese, softened

˝ cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract )

2 cups all-purpose flour

36 small ripe strawberries, hulled and halved

Preheat the oven to 350°. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter with the cream cheese until well blended. Beat in the sugar and vanilla, then stir in the flour until well mixed. Using a 1/2 -tablespoon measure, shape the mixture into small balls and place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Make a small indentation in the top of each cookie with your thumb. Carefully place a strawberry half, cut side down, in each indentation. Bake for 12 to 18 minutes or until very lightly browned. Cool on racks. Makes 5 dozen.

I stared at the creamy concoction. My supplier had recently delivered several quarts of fresh strawberries. I decided to cut them up and use them to top each cookie, for the red and white effect. The things a caterer is called upon to do. I rolled dainty half-tablespoonfuls of dough into spheres, thumb-printed the lot, and then put a half of a strawberry, seed-side up, in the little indentations. I slapped the cookie sheets into the oven, set the timer, then fixed another espresso.

Fifteen minutes later I was munching on the luscious results. They were like tiny cheesecakes, something you would have at an English tea. I decided to dub them something catchy. Red ‘n’ Whites, maybe. And speaking of something catchy, I decided then and there to beg Julian to let me help him with the SAT drill-questions, if he was still interested. How hard could it be? I already knew the opposite of tranquil: today’s lunch.

Two hours later, toting three doily-covered trays and a wrapped package of six dozen Red ‘n’ Whites, I pulled into the parking lot of the Aspen Meadow Cafe. The Dawsons had tried hard to make their restaurant appear as continental as possible. There was no question that the cafe’s sleek, glassed exterior was a far cry from the more casual health food and Western barbecue spots that peppered Aspen Meadow, places where tourists or construction workers or psychic massage practitioners could grab a noontime bite. No, the folks who frequented this cafe were, for the most part, not the kind who had to go out and work for a living, at least not full-time. Or they belonged to a growing group of professionals who could put on cowboy hats and wander out for a two-hour lunch.

I eased the van between a Mercedes (license plate: LOIR; I guess ATURNIE was already taken) and Buick Riviera (URSIK; now, how was that to inspire confidence in an M.D.?). The cafe was sandwiched in the dark-paneled, turquoise-trimmed shopping center known as Aspen Meadow North. There was Aspen Meadow Florist, whose blossoms Schulz had recently decimated, and Aspen Meadow Interior Design, with its perennially southwest window display. Tasteful Halloween decorations adorned the windows of upscale boutiques. Next to the cafe was the undecorated window of Aspen Meadow Weight Control Center. Ah, irony!

I entered the cafe and passed the baskets of braided breads and puffed brioches, passed the cheese case with its Stiltons, Camemberts, and buffalo mozzarellas, and came up to the glass case of desserts. Luscious-looking apricot cream tortes, multilayered chocolate mousse cakes, and all manner of truffles called put for attention. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the exclamations of delight that would greet my Happy Endings Plum Cake when it held a prominent place in front of the displayed concoctions.

Audrey had already arrived with Heather, whose pouty expression and slumped posture next to the Stiltons did not indicate happy-camper status. Audrey, utterly oblivious to her daughter’s funk, sidled up to me and warned, “I made the mistake of asking the Dawsons if Greer had anything to impress the Stanford rep with. They went into a fit of preparation. Greer hightailed it into the bathroom and changed into a red and white outfit. Now they’re all awaiting your presence in the kitchen for the big taste test. Oh.” She lifted one eyebrow in her wide, humorless face. “The jam’s putrid. Better say you’ll make the Linzertorte they want at home.”

Too much. I said, “Any sign of the Marenskys? Or Miss Ferrell?”

She pressed her lips together. “Ferrell’s in the kitchen. I don’t know about the Marenskys.”

I said wishfully, “Is the jam just tart? Would it be better with some sugar mixed in?”

The smile she gave me oozed smugness. “Believe me, Goldy, you could take the sugar made by every beet farmer in eastern Colorado and put it in that jam, and it would still taste like solidified vinegar.”

“Thanks, Audrey,” I said dryly. “I trust you didn’t let your opinion show.”

“I had to spit it out. Either that or throw up.” “Great,” I said as the Dawsons approached. They were like a human phalanx.

“Hey, Hank! Great game Sunday.” His face turned even more grim at my greeting. “They were lucky, you know that, Goldy. Washington’s going to be tough. About as tough as this Stanford guy. We’ve just been talking about how to play him.”

“I don’t know why the Marenskys are even bothering to bring Brad,” said Caroline primly. “Everyone knows Stanford is as demanding as the Ivy League schools. They never take anyone below the top ten percent.”

I murmured, “But in a school as small as Elk Park Prep – “

“Never!” she interrupted me, her small dark eyes glowing. “Didn’t you hear me?”

I was saved assuring her that my hearing was fine by the cheerful jingle of the bell hung over the cafe door. Stan Marensky came through, wearing a fur jacket, then Rhoda strutted regally past the bread baskets in a full-length fur coat, not the raccoon thing. She was followed by a diminutive fellow, presumably the Stanford rep. He wore blue jeans, a bow tie, and no coat. Bringing up the rear was Brad Marensky, a broad-shouldered boy who wore shorts and an Elk Park Prep varsity tennis T-shirt, despite the fact that it was about thirty-eight degrees outside.

The diminutive fellow glanced around the cafe. He did ‘not look so very powerful to me. Yet beside me, Audrey Coopersmith was visibly trembling. “Audrey,” I said in as comforting a tone as I could muster, “please relax. This is simply not as important as you make it out to be.”

Her look was chill. “You just don’t get it, Goldy.” The Marenskys were chatting in loud, possessive tones to the Stanford rep. They seemed extraordinarily pleased with themselves, and acted as if some very important business had been resolved in the ten-minute car ride from the 1-70 exit. It occurred to me that while the Marenskys, who were both as thin as models, ignored me, the short, rotund Dawsons were always curious about my every word or thought.

Hank Dawson leaned in close. “They sure seem smug. I wonder what they could have told him about Brad? That kid’s only number five in the class, he’ll never make it. I need to get that guy away from them. Punt or go for it?”

“Go for it,” I said without hesitation.

“Welcome to our little restaurant.” Caroline Dawson’s lilting voice pronounced restaurant with a French accent. I cringed. The Marenskys turned into two skinny ice sculptures as they watched Caroline Dawson waddle forward in one of her trademark crimson suits.

“We’d like to take you into the kitchen,” Caroline Dawson declared. She grasped the young man’s arm firmly. Once she had him in tow, she indicated with a move of her head that she wanted me to follow her into the kitchen. “Our daughter, Greer, who is third in her class, is by the Hobart,” she said with great sweetness.

“I’m so glad you came out on an early ski trip,” she added as if she and the unfortunate rep were old chums.

“Should I kneel and kiss his ring?” I asked Audrey Coopersmith, who had timidly followed me in while tugging Heather’s sleeve to bring her along. The Marenskys, trying to appear cool and unruffled, marched out into the kitchen to see what the Dawsons were up to with the rep.

While we were all assembling in the kitchen, Caroline engaged the Stanford rep in lively, empty conversation. Miss Ferrell, drinking coffee and leaning against a sink, had a pained look on her face. Well, that ought to teach the college counselor not to host unexpected reps. She click-clacked her way over to me on her tiny heels.

“I have a teachers’ meeting in Denver the next couple of days, Ms. Bear,” she said under her breath. “But I would like to talk to you about Julian as soon as I get back. Can you free up some time? He came to see me this morning, and of course he’s very upset about what happened to Arch… but he also has a number of questions about Keith. Oh, this all has become so dark – ” She jerked back abruptly, suddenly aware that Audrey, Hank Dawson, and the Marenskys were all keen to hear what she had to say.

“What questions about Keith?” I asked.

“He was having some problems – ” she began in a low voice. She looked around. The Marenskys began to whisper to each other. Hank reached for a cabinet door while Audrey pretended to be intensely perusing a menu she had found on the counter. “Some problems with this college thing,” Miss Ferrell whispered.

“How about chatting Saturday morning before the tests?” I whispered back. I sneaked a sidelong glance at Audrey, but to read the menu she had put on her usual blank expression. It was hard to tell whether she was listening. “I’ll be setting up that breakfast out at the school.”

Miss Ferrell nodded and turned on her heels and click-clacked back to the Stanford rep. Greer Dawson had made her appearance from the back end of the kitchen. As Audrey had predicted, the teenager was ‘wearing a red and white striped shirt. The skirt matched. Her golden hair curled angelically around her diminutive heart-shaped face. I was reminded of the Breck girl. Daintily, Greer reached for a utensil and spooned a mouthful of the raspberry jam into the rep’s reluctantly open mouth. Apparently, Greer didn’t want me to preempt the rep in the tasting. With startling suddenness the rep’s face took on the look of a two-week-old kiwi fruit.

He said in a high, uncertain voice over the expectant hush in the room, “What? No sweetener?”

Everyone immediately began bustling around, trying to make up for this faux pas. Everyone, that is, except Audrey, who leaned in to my ear and jeered, “Nanny-nanny-nana.”

“Ah, well.” Hank Dawson hustled forward. “This jam is still in development, I mean, this is a new batch, and Greer’s just a rookie chef, after all, you can hardly judge – “

“We’ll let Goldy decide,” Caroline Dawson announced imperiously. “After all, she’s the one Greer’s been studying with.”

Oh, blame it on the caterer! Well, excuse me, but the only thing Greer had studied while she was with me was whether you served pie with a spoon or a fork. Up until now, the girl had never shown even the slightest inkling of interest in rood preparation. Of course, I knew what this setup was all about. If I pretended to love the jam, I’d get a Linzertorte job in addition to the plum cake assignment, and I’d show up Miss Ferrell and poor Audrey. Not to mention the Stanford guy. If I screwed up my face in disgust, I could forget about a Stanford tailgate picnic, and I could go elsewhere to peddle my plum cake. I also had the discomforting premonition that Schulz might walk in at any moment on this ridiculous scenario. The things a caterer has to do for business.

I stalled. “Fresh spoon?”

“In there.” Audrey motioned to a wooden drawer. I pulled the drawer open. It held one of those plastic four-part silverware trays. Each section bulged with utensils. I reached toward the spoon section, desperately attempting to imagine sweet jam.

“I’ll get a big one,” I said loudly.

But I wasn’t going to taste jam that day. I should have looked more closely at the small object in the spoon section, the shiny black round form, the red hourglass on the bottom of its dark belly. But by the time I had the sense to draw back my hand, I had already been bitten by the black widow.

10

“Omigod!” I screeched.

The Dawsons, the Marenskys, Miss Ferrell, Audrey, all pressed forward with urgent queries: What happened? Are you all right? A spIder? Are you sure? Where?

I backed up, my left hand clutching my right wrist. The stinging crept up my finger and into my palm. Furiously, I thought, Why did it have to be my right hand? I backed hard into Stan Marensky. When I whirled around, he appeared stunned. Involuntary tears filled my eyes.

Hank Dawson ran to the phone, Caroline Dawson began comforting a screaming Greer, the Marenskys demanded of one another and of a gaping Brad what the hell was going on, Miss Ferrell splashed cold water over a paper towel. Audrey was on her knees, looking for the spider, which she was convinced I had shaken out onto the floor. The poor Stanford guy was standing stock-still, his mouth gaping. You could see his mind working: This place is weird.

“Uh-uh,” I said to the familiar person lumbering fast into the kitchen: Tom Schulz.

“What’s going on?” he demanded. He reached out for my forearm and examined the spot I was pointing to on my right index finger. It was swelling up and reddening. And it burned. I mean, my hand was on fire.

From the floor, Audrey hollered up at him: “Do something, take her to the hospital, she’s been bitten by a poisonous spider, do something…”

Tom Schulz gripped my shoulders. “Goldy,” he said, demanding my gaze. “Was it small and brown?”

Isaid,“Uh…uh…”

“Would you know a brown recluse?”

“It wasn’t… that wasn’t…”

He seemed relieved, then raised his eyebrows. He said, “Black widow?” and I nodded. To each of his questions – ” Are you allergic? Do you know?” – I shook my head and gave a helpless gesture. I hadn’t the slightest idea if I was allergic. How often does one get bitten by a poisonous arachnid?

Hank Dawson trundled rapidly back into the kitchen. His voice cracked when he announced, “Oh, God, all the ambulances in the entire mountain area are tied up! Is she going to be all right? Should one of us take her to a hospital? Is she gonna die? What?”

Schulz hustled me out of there. Amid the siren, lights, squeal of tires, and Schulz’s inability to get his cellular phone to work, we hightailed it out of Aspen Meadow North and got onto Interstate 70. As the dun-brown hills whizzed by, I held my hand by the wrist like a tourniquet. I tried to think of the spider venom as a toxic black ink that I was willing to stay in my palm and not travel through my veins into the bloodstream.

Once we were on I-70, Schulz’s cellular phone kicked in and he announced to Dispatch where he was going. Then he called the poison center. Through the crackle of interference they directed us to Denver General Hospital. It had the closest source of antivenin, they told Schulz. My hand burned.

Cursing the welling tears and my shaking voice, I asked, “Isn’t this supposed to go away or something? It’s not really poisonous, is it?”

He kept his eyes on the road as we whipped past a truck. “Depends. Brown recluse would’ve been worse.”

I cleared my throat. “I have to be able to take care of Arch… .” I was beginning to perspire heavily. Each time I took a breath, the bite throbbed. It was like being in labor.

Schulz said, “Feel nauseated?” I told him no. After a minute he said, “You’re not going to die. I don’t know why you go into that damn cafe, though. Last summer somebody pushed you into a glass case there. I’m telling you, Goldy, that place and you don’t mix.”

“No kidding.” Perspiration trickled down my scalp. I stared at my swollen finger, now overcome with a dull, numbing pain. Strangely, I also felt a hardening pain developing between my shoulders. I took a breath. Agony. “I’m beginning to hurt allover. How’m I going to cook? Why did it have to be my right hand?”

He flicked me a look. “Why did it have to be you at all?”

Headache squeezed my temples mercilessly. I whispered, “Good thing you came along when you did.”

“The posse,” he said impassively. In the emergency room a bleached-blond nurse asked in a clipped voice about allergies and insurance. A dark-complected doctor asked about how long ago this had happened and what I had been doing to make the spider bite me. Some people. While the doctor examined the bite, I closed my eyes and did Lamaze breathing. The childbirth experience, like the divorce experience, can give you a reservoir of behaviors to deal with crises for the rest of your life.

The doctor finally decreed that invenomation had not been severe. I did not, he said, need to be hospitalized. He checked my vital signs, then told me to take hot baths this afternoon and tonight, to relieve the muscular pain in my back. When I asked about working, he said I might be cooking again by tomorrow, that I should see how I felt. Before he breezed out he said tonight was for rest.

“Oh, gosh,” I exclaimed, suddenly remembering, “the red and white cookies for the school! I don’t know if Audrey remembered them!”

“Goldy, please,” said Schulz, “why not let somebody else – “

“I can’t, I worked all morning on those things,” I said stubbornly, and scooted off the examination table. Dizziness rocked me as soon as my feet hit the ground. Shaking his head, Schulz held my arm as we walked down the hall to a pay phone. He punched in the number of the cafe and tried to cut through the barrage of frantic queries from Hank Dawson. Finally, sighing, Schulz handed me the phone.

Hank’s inquiries about whether I was okay were immediately followed by a volley of questions designed to ascertain whether I was going to sue him. No, I wouldn’t contemplate legal action, I promised, if he would retrieve the platters of cookies from my van and get them over to the prep school. Hank said Audrey had left in her “usual high-strung state” and had forgotten them, but that he would make sure they were delivered. Somewhat ruefully, he added that the Stanford rep had worried aloud about hygiene conditions at the cafe. To add insult to injury, Hank informed me, the rep hadn’t even stayed for a free lunch. Greer’s future at Stanford didn’t look so hot.

After what seemed like an interminable wait – I couldn’t decide if the doctor was waiting for me to die, get better, or just disappear – the blond nurse reappeared and announced that I could go. Schulz drove me home. I felt embarrassed to have taken so much of his time, and said so.

He chuckled. “Are you kidding? Most exciting lunch I’ve had all week.”

Audrey Coopersmith’s white pickup truck sat in front of my house. Audrey got out, and with her shoulders rolled inward, marched with her long duck-walk stride up to my front porch: the first official greeter. Bless her, she had brought a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of carnations. As Schulz and I came slowly up the walk, she stood, feet apart, hands clasping the flowers behind her back. Her face seemed frozen in anxiety. Schulz still held me gently by the right elbow, but he lifted his chin and squinted his eyes, appraising Audrey.

Under his breath he said, “Have you introduced me to this Mouseketeer?”

“Don’t.”

When we got to the front door, Audrey wordlessly thrust the flowers at me. Then, seeing my bandaged hand, she awkwardly drew the bouquet back and blushed deeply. I mumbled a thanks and reluctantly asked her to come in. It took me a minute to remember my security code. Put it down to spider toxin fuzzing the brain. After some fumbling we all stood in my kitchen.

Audrey’s eyes widened at the vases and baskets of roses, daisies, freesias, astromeria. The kitchen smelled like a flower show.

“Gosh. Guess you didn’t need carnations after all.”

“Of course I did, now, meet my friend,” I said, and introduced her to Schulz, who was already ferreting through the freezer to dig out ice cubes for my finger. Schulz wiped his hands and courteously addressed her. I added that Audrey was a temporary helper for the catering business along with her work at the Tattered Cover. Schulz cocked his head and said he remembered that Audrey was one of the people who had helped me out the night of the Keith Andrews fatality.

She pressed her lips together. Her nostrils flared. “Well, Alfred Perkins has decided to move the location of the college advisory evenings.”

“Yes,” said Schulz with his Santa Claus grin, “going down to the bookstore, right? Terrific place. Will you be helping Goldy on Friday too?” Mr. Charm.

Audrey visibly relaxed and said yes to both questions. The edges of her mouth may have been starting to turn up in one of her rare grins. Then again, maybe it was my imagination. We were saved from more banter by the telephone. Schulz gestured toward it and raised his eyebrows at me, as in, Should I get it? I nodded. It was my mother, calling from New Jersey because she had just heard that there had been a big snowstorm in Colorado. I try to tell my parents, This time of year, there is always lots of snow falling somewhere in the Rockies. Why this meteorological condition is so profoundly newsworthy for the national networks is beyond me. We take the precipitation in stride; the dire announcements just worry Coloradans’ relatives who live elsewhere. I wedged the phone under my chin so I could keep the ice cubes on my right hand.

“Goldy! Is that the policeman you’ve been seeing? Why is he at your house in the middle of the day?” So much for the snow crisis. But if I told my mother what had just happened, there would be another flood of worried questions. I had never even told her Schulz was a homicide investigator. If she learned that, all hell would break loose.

“He’s just helping me out;” I told her. “I’ve, uh, had a bit of sickness.”

My mother’s high voice grew panicked. “Not morning sickness…”

“Mother. Please. It’s past lunch here, thus well after morning. Not only that, but we’ve had only a tiny amount of snow, and Arch is due home any second – “

“Tell me again,” she pressed, “is Tom Schulz somebody you knew from C.U.?” This query was designed to ascertain if Schulz was a college graduate. If she couldn’t have a doctor for a son-in-law, Mom would at least go for well educated.

I said, “No, not from C.U.” I wanted to say, Last night I had my emotional life changed by this guy… to-day he drove me down to the hospital and back in a life-threatening situation, you’re not going to believe this, Mother, I’ve finally found somebody who really cares about me… . The phone slipped out of my left hand and bounced off the floor.

Her more distant voice persisted. “But he’s not just … somebody you met, is he? This isn’t going to be someone you just… picked up at a policeman’s picnic or – ?”

I picked up the phone. “Mother. No. This is someone” – I looked at Schulz and smiled – “very special, very smart. He is unique. He knows all about china and antiques and still was able to get a job with an equal-opportunity employer.”

“Oh, God, he’s colored – “

“Mother!” I promised to call over the weekend, and hastily said good-bye.

Schulz eyed me askance. “Didn’t quite measure up, did I?”

“I heard her,” Audrey said, and mimicked my mother’s voice, “‘Someone you picked up?’ Sorry, Goldy. Why do women of our mothers’ generation worry so much about what kind of man we’re seeing or married to? Why don’t they worry about how we’re doing? That’s what I tell Heather, ‘I’m worried about you, honey, not some boy you might be dating and what his background is.’ ” Audrey moved to the sink and poured herself a glass of water. She finished with, “You should have told her Schulz went to Harvard.”

“Oh, Lord, don’t remind me,” groaned Schulz. He turned and gave me a half-grin. “I went out to Elk Park Prep to get a few things cleared up, and the headmaster asked me where I went to school.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know what he meant, so I said, ‘Well, first there was North Peak Elementary – ‘ and old .Perkins waved his hand and said, ‘Stop right there.’ “

I was shocked. This hurt as much as the spider bite. How dare Perkins insult Schulz, who was in every way his superior? I felt the slight as keenly as if Perkins had criticized Arch. “That imbecile!” I blurted out.

Schulz turned his unruffled, seawater-green gaze at me. I felt my face redden and a flip-flop tighten my abdomen. “Not to worry, Miss G. I know the difference between a person who’s educated enough to handle life’s challenges and a person who just needs to brag all the time.

Audrey’s mouth sagged open. She said, “Make that ‘the difference between a woman who can handle life’s challenges and a man who needs to brag all the time.’ “

Schulz said, “Hmm.”

I didn’t know where this was going and I didn’t care. But Schulz was interested. To Audrey, he said, “Er, tell me what you mean.”

Audrey’s tone was defiant. “That’s what I’m trying to teach Heather. I say, ‘Get ahead now, honey, while you’re young, you don’t want to get stuck taking care of some man’s socks and ego.’” She took a shuddering breath. “You see, if you don’t get ahead when you’re young, if you just let things go along, if you trust people…”

A cloud of bitterness soured her features. “Oh, never mind. All I want is for Heather to have things I never had. She is phenomenally talented,” she said, animated again. “She ran the virtual reality simulator this summer for exploring Mars.” She glared at us fiercely. “Heather is going to be a success.”

Schulz leaned back in his chair and ,gave Audrey and me a benevolent, questioning grin. “Success, huh?”

When we had no response, he got up out of his chair and cocked his head at us. “You feeling okay, Goldy?” When I said I thought so, he added, “I’m going to make some tea.”

We were silent while Schulz rummaged for cups, saucers, and a pot, and then drew water. Finally Audrey said glumly, “Success is what I’m not.” She ticked off on her fingers. “No meaningful work or career, no relationship, no money…”

Well, I was not going to interrupt my part-time assistant and say, catering is meaningful work for some of us, if not for you. Catering pays the bills. That’s my definition of meaningful.

Schulz said, “I grew up in eastern Colorado and paid for my own college education until I was drafted. I didn’t finish a degree until I got out of the army. Criminalistics, University of Colorado at Denver.” He frowned. “I’ve! killed people and thought it was wrong, killed them and I, thought it was right. Some criminals I catch and some I don’t. I make a good salary and I’m unmarried, no kids.”

He rubbed his chin, watching Audrey. “But I think of myself as a success. In fact” – here he gave me a wink – “I’m getting more successful all the time.”

“Huh,” said Audrey. The teakettle whistled. Schulz moved efficiently around the kitchen, first ladling in China black tea leaves, then pouring a steaming stream of water into the pot. He ducked into the refrigerator and came out with a dish of leftover Red ‘n’ Whites. I glanced at my watch: 3:00, Arch and Julian would be home within the hour, and we had nothing for dinner. Maybe Julian would want to cook, This time he’d get no argument from me.

Audrey’s hand trembled as she lifted her teacup and saucer. The cup made a chittering sound as Schulz slowly filled it. Audrey did not look at me when she went on, “… I didn’t go to a school where I could make something out of myself. If only I had studied math, instead of …”

The pain in my hand was getting worse. I was having trouble focusing on Audrey’s voice, whine whine, Caltech, whine whine Mount Holyoke, Heather’s always been so gifted. Sudden exhaustion swept over me. I dreaded telling Arch and Julian about the spider bite. I longed to take my first doctor-prescribed hot bath. But now Audrey was complaining about how the best possible thing for Heather would be a big science-oriented school in California or the Northeast, since they had the best reputations and would assure her of landing a great job once she graduated. Maybe it was the bite, maybe it was my mood, maybe I had just had it with this kind of talk. Enough.

“Uncle! A big-name school is not going to make a person. You make it sound like it’s sex or something!”

Schulz turned down the edges of his mouth in an effort not to laugh. He cleared his throat with a great rumbly sound and said, “Oh, yeah? Like sex? This ought to be interesting. Goldy? You haven’t touched your tea.”

I slouched back and obligingly sipped. “Let me tell you, my college counselor promised me the moon and I believed her.”

Audrey said, “Really? Where did you go?” I told her; she was impressed. She said, “Gosh! A camel’s-hair coat in every closet!”

“Spare me.” I remembered undergraduate nights shivering in freezing rain mixed with snow. I didn’t recall ever seeing a camel’s-hair coat. I sighed. “Where do these reputations come from? People think, If you go to this or that college, you’re in. Go to this or that school and you’ll become beautiful and smart and get a great job and be a successful person. What a joke.”

“She’s getting cynical in her old age,” Schulz told Audrey out of the side of his mouth. Then to me, brightly, “Would you pass the sugar?”

“I mean, just look at the catalogue.” I slid Schulz the sugar bowl with my good hand. “Look at the close-up shots of Gothic spires… they do it that way so you won’t see the smog. Look at the good-looking well-dressed preppy white Anglo-Saxon Protestant females striding together across the lush green campus. They and their friends vacated the campus over the weekend, while the less attractive girls stayed alone in the dorms, their minuscule numbers at meals an indictment of their own unpopularity.”

I put down my teacup and held my hands open as if perusing an imaginary brochure. “Wow! Look at the picture of that energetic lecturer and those students eagerly taking notes – that must be a fascinating class!” I gave them a fascinated – class look. “The class is required for your major, but it took you three and a half years to get into it! Complain to your parents, as I did, and they say, ‘For this we’re paying thousands a year?’” I sipped tea and gave them a wide grin. “Man, I just loved going to a big-name school.”

Schulz explained placidly to Audrey, “Goldy has an excitable temperament.”

“Nah,” I said, surprised by the passion in my little diatribe. “What the heck, I even give the school money.”

The phone rang. Schulz raised his eyebrows at me again, and again I nodded. This time it was Julian. He had heard about the spider incident when Hank Dawson fulfilled his promise and delivered the cookies. Julian was frantic. Schulz tried to lighten it up by saying, “I’ve warned her not to try to cook with spiders,” but Julian was having none of it. I could hear him yelling.

I signaled, “Just let me talk to him.” When Schulz resignedly handed me the phone, I said, “Julian, I’m fine, I want you to quit worrying about me – “

“Who put that spider in the drawer?” he yelled. “Miss Ferrell? Trying to take attention away from her other problems?”

“Whoa, Julian. Of course Miss Ferrell didn’t put it in the drawer. Come on. Everybody knows black widows live all over Colorado. I hardly think Miss Ferrell, or anybody else for that matter, would deliberately try something nasty like that.”

“Want to bet? She just told me she doesn’t know anything about food science! I’ll bet she doesn’t think it’s worthy. She’s not going to give me a good recommendation, I know it. She’s a class A bitch from the word go.”

“I’ll talk to her,” I volunteered. “Lot of good that’ll do,” he replied bitterly. And then he sighed. It was a deep, pained, resigned sigh.

“What else is going on?” I asked, concerned. “You sound terrible.”

“We’re all staying until about six. There’s a vocabulary-review thing going on in Ferrell’s room. Arch is in the library, don’t worry. We’ll just be home late.”

“How was the Stanford rep? Did you have some cookies?”

“Oh, the room was packed. I didn’t go.” He paused. “Sheila Morgenstern told me she mailed in her early decision application to Cornell. She’s sixth in our class, but she got 1550 combined on her SATs last year. I’m happy for her, I guess, but it’s bad for me. Cornell will never take two kids from the same school. Especially if one of them isn’t going to get a good recommendation from the college counselor.”

“Oh, come on, sure they will, Julian. You’re just making yourself miserable. Lighten up!”

There was a silence. “Goldy,” Julian said evenly, “I know you mean well. Really, I do. But honestly, you don’t know a thing.”

“Oh,” I mumbled, staring at my swollen finger. Maybe he was right. My life did seem to be a mess at the moment. “I didn’t mean to – “

“Aah, forget about it. To make things worse, I flunked a French quiz this morning. And I flunked a history quiz too. Not my day, I guess.”

“FIunked?”

“Oh, I was tired, and then Ferrell asked five questions about the subjunctive. Schlichtmaier asked about Lafayette, and I guess I missed that part when he talked about him.” He mocked, “Veil, ve don’t know for shoor …”

“Don’t,” I said. “Yeah, yeah, I know, don’t be prejudiced. Forgot to mention, half the class flunked too. Nobody’s learning a thing in there.” There was a silence. “And hey, I’m not the one making fun of Schlichtmaier. I stick up for him every chance I get.”

“I’m sure you do.”

But Julian’s tone had again grown savage. “You want to know the truth, the guy who used to make fun of him is dead.”

11

“Now, that’s a happy note.” I hung up the phone, somehow managing not to bang my injured finger. “Julian says I am totally ignorant. And worse, he’s afraid Miss Ferrell isn’t going to write him a good recommendation for Cornell.”

“He’s sunk,” proclaimed Audrey. “He won’t get in now if he invents a solar-powered car.”

“Oh, give me a break.”

“Come on,” Schulz interjected. “That’s just the kind of car we need down at the Sheriff’s Department.”

Audrey smiled shyly. On my index finger the bite area throbbed. I peeked under the bandage and saw that the redness had resolved itself into an enormous, ugly blister. I pondered it glumly. Schulz poured more tea. He wasn’t going anywhere, and I didn’t know whether this sudden lack of purpose stemmed from concern for me or curiosity about Audrey. I suspected the latter.

Audrey got to her feet. She left the bouquet of carnations on the table beside her empty teacup. “Well, I suppose I ought to be moving on. Think you’re going to be okay to cook Friday? It’s just a few days away.”

I held out my hands helplessly, as in, Do I have a choice? I told her she could come by at six. “And thanks for the flowers. They’re a great addition to the shop here.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Schulz volunteered with unnecessary enthusiasm. I looked puzzled. He ignored me.

Outside, he stood talking with Audrey for a few minutes, then walked her to her pickup. After a few moments he came back, slowly sat in one of my kitchen chairs, then gently lifted my right hand and examined it. “I have to ask you the obvious, you know. Do you think that spider was intended for you? Or for somebody else?”

“I do not believe it was intended for me, or anyone else for that matter,” I replied firmly. “There was a lot of confusion in the kitchen, a big crowd, a lot of chitchat about tasting jam.” I saw my hand, as if in slow motion, go into the silverware drawer. “It just happened.”

He mused about this for a while. For the first time I noticed the care he had used to dress for our lunch: pinstripe shirt, rep tie, knitted vest; corduroy pants. While I was looking him over, he winked and said, “Audrey didn’t mention going to college herself.”

“She went, all right, at least for a while. But it rained so much, she said her bike ran over fish on her way to classes. And I guess the classes themselves were awful. Dates were nonexistent. And everyone at her high school had told her it was going to be this wonderful experience. She got some therapy there at the school clinic. She hated that too. She finally concluded that what was making her unhappy was the school itself. So she left and got married. And now the marriage is breaking up.”

Schulz gave me his impassive face. “How long’s she had that pickup truck, do you know?”

The question was so unexpected that I laughed. “Gosh, Officer, I don’t know. For as long as I’ve known her. Maybe it’s part of her financial settlement. My theory is that she drives it because it’s part of her image.”

Schulz squinted at me. “Think she’s capable of killing somebody?”

My skin went cold. I said, choosing my words carefully, “I don’t know. What do you suspect?”

“Remember K. Andrews down in Lakewood?” When I nodded, he continued. “I went down, questioned all the neighbors, even though the Lakewood guys had already done it. Hardly anyone’s around during the day, and nobody saw anything unusually suspicious. A blue Mercedes, a silver limousine, an old white pickup, maybe a new ice cream truck. No identifying features. One young mother glanced out her window and saw somebody stopped at Kathy Andrews’ mailbox one day. She’d already reported it. ‘Something unusual,’ she says, ‘something out of place. That’s all I can remember.’ “

“Something out of place?” I said, puzzled. “A moving van? A flying saucer? Is that all you could get out of her?”

“Hey! Don’t think I didn’t try. I say, ‘Not a car from the neighborhood? Not Fed Ex or UPS?’ She shakes her head. I go, ‘Not the usual mail person?’ ‘No, no, no,’ she says, ‘it was something it was too late for, just one instant, there and then gone.’ That’s all that registered with her. I say, ‘Too late for what? The mail?’ And she says, ‘I just don’t know.’ “

“So you checked with all the delivery people, limousine people, and nobody was late for anything.”

“Correct. Nada. Same as the Lakewood guys found.” He sipped his cold tea. “Then I see Ms. Audrey Coopersmith’s pickup truck parked out front of your house, and I think, ‘an old white pickup,’ the way one of the other neighbors said. Kathy Andrews’ old boyfriend drove a pickup, I found out. Would you say Audrey Coopersmith’s truck looks old?”

“Old? I guess it’s not new and shiny… but why would Audrey steal some woman’s credit card in Lakewood and then beat her to death?”

“Don’t know. The most frequent kind of credit-card fraud we have is a woman – excuse me, Miss G.– anyway, getting her friends’ cards and signing their names to her purchases. Audrey works in Denver at the bookstore, and maybe she goes across the street to Neiman-Marcus on her break, sees some gal make a purchase, and the saleslady says, ‘Thank you, Miss Andrews,’ and Miss Andrews says, ‘You can call me Kathy.’ So maybe Audrey, who is having all these money problems, thinks of Keith Andrews, a convenient place to dump the card if things got hot. Then again, maybe all this investigating he was doing for the paper got him on her path.”

“Pretty farfetched, I’d say. I mean, you can see for yourself that we’re not exactly talking a designer wardrobe.”

He smiled grimly. “But she was at that college advisory dinner, she has some unresolved feelings about her own past and present, and maybe all that got taken out on Kathy, and then Keith, Andrews.” Again the raised eyebrows. “And she was at the cafe today when you were there with the Dawsons and Miss Ferrell. Maybe she put the spider in the drawer and it was intended for someone else, like the college counselor. Was she at the school the day Arch found the rattler in his locker?”

With a sickening feeling I remembered Audrey standing in the hall, telling me the headmaster wanted to see me. My finger ached dully. “Yes,” I said, “she was.”

Schulz asked to use my phone. When he had finished telling someone to check on Audrey Coopersmith’s vehicle and background, he turned back toward me.

“Actually, I do know a cure for black widow spider bites!’

“Now you tell me.”

“You gotta stand up first.”

“‘Tom – “

“You want to get better or not?”

I stood, and as soon as I had, he reached down and scooped me up in his arms.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed when he was halfway down my front hall.

He started up the staircase. “Guess. I got the afternoon off, in case you haven’t noticed.”

In my bedroom he set me down on the bed, then kissed my finger all the way around the bite.

“Better yet?” His smile was mischievous.

“Why, I do believe I’m feeling some improvement, Officer.”

He kissed my wrist, my forearm, my elbow. A tickle of desire began at the back of my throat. It was all I could do to keep from laughing as we undressed each other, especially when my bandaged right hand made me fumble. I reached for the fleshy expanse of Schulz’s back. Only the night before, I had begun to discover hidden curves and niches there. Schulz’s warm body snuggled in next to mine. His hands lingered on my skin. Tom Schulz was the opposite of John Richard’s knobby edges and angry, thrusting force. And when it was over, I wanted him to stay in my bed and never leave.

“This is so great,” I murmured into his shoulder. “So you are feeling better.”

“It’s a miracle. No more spider bite pain. You see, Officer, I planted the black widow – “

We went off into a fit of giggles. Then we fell silent. Schulz tucked the sheets and blanket around my neck and shoulders until not a square centimeter of cold, foreign air could penetrate the warm pouch within. Knowing that the boys were due home late, I allowed myself to drift off to sleep. My mother was probably right to be suspicious. It was nice, in fact it was delicious to be so successfully up to something with this man in my house in the middle of the day.

The sun had already begun its blazing retreat behind the mountains when I woke to see Schulz standing beside my bed. My alarm clock said 5:30.

I said quietly, “The boys here yet?”

“No. You stay put. I’m fixing dinner.” I got up anyway and took the doctor-ordered bath. As I was putting on clean clothes, trying in vain not to use my right hand, my phone rang. I dove for it, in case it was my mother. The last thing she needed was to hear Schulz’s voice ,again.

“Goldy, you degenerate.”

“Now what?”

“Oh, tell me that policeman’s car has been outside your house for three hours so he can teach you about security.”

“Give me a break, Marla. I got bitten by a black widow.”

“Old news. And I’m sorry. That’s why I drove by, four times. I was worried about you. Of course, I didn’t want to interrupt anything exciting… .”

“Okay, okay. Give me a little sympathy here. You wouldn’t believe this bite I’ve got.”

“Giving you sympathy is what I hope Tom Schulz has been doing, and a whole lot more, sweetie pie. I am going to give you help tomorrow with whatever kind of catering things you’ve got going.”

“But you don’t even cook!”

Marla snorted. “After tomorrow, you’ll know why.” In the kitchen Schulz was playing country music on the radio and using a wok to steam vegetables. He had made a pasta dough that was resting, wrapped, on one of my counters, and he had grated two kinds of cheese and measured out cream and white wine.

“Fettuccine Schulz,” he informed me as he jiggled the wok’s steamer tray. “How hard is it to make pasta in this machine? That dough’s ready.”

I put a pasta plate on my large mixer and Schulz rolled the dough into walnut-sized pieces. Just as the machine began producing golden ribbons of fettuccine, we heard the boys trudging up the porch steps.

I felt a pang of sudden nervousness. “What’s our story?”

“Story for what?” He laid out handfuls of pasta to dry. “You got bitten and I’m helping out. They’re not going to say, Well, did you guys make love all afternoon? If they do, I’ll say” – he put his big hands around my waist and swung me around – “yes, yes, yes, I’m trying to force this woman to marry me by making mad passionate love to her at least once a day.”

The door opened and I squealed at him in panic. He put me down lightly, looking unrepentant. I glanced around hastily for something to do. Julian and Arch rushed into the room, then stopped, gazing in silent awe at the masses of flowers.”

“Gosh,” murmured Julian, a news sure travels fast in this town. All this for a spider bite?”

I didn’t answer. Arch was giving me half a hug with one arm while keeping his other hand free to hold up my bandaged area and examine it. He pulled back and regarded me from behind his tortoiseshell-framed glasses.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course.”

He closed one eye in appraisal. “But something’s going on. Sure it wasn’t anything worse than a spider bite, Mom? I mean, all these flowers. Are you sick?”

“Arch! For heaven’s sake, I’m fine. Go wash your hands and get ready for dinner.”

Saved by the chore. To my surprise, they both sprinted out, calling back and forth about the work they were going to do together that night. Julian had volunteered to help Arch construct a model of the Dawn Treader. Then they were going to go over Arch’s social studies homework. After the moon set, they were going to look for the Milky Way. Amazing.

When they came downstairs we all delved into the pasta. The velvety fettuccine was bathed in a rich cheese sauce studded with carrots, onions, broccoli, and luscious sun-dried tomatoes. It was not until we were eating the dessert, the final batch of leftover Red ‘n’ Whites, that Arch dropped his bombshell.

“Oh,” he said without preliminaries. “I finally thought of something that someone warned me not to tattle about.” We all stopped talking, and held cookies in mid-bite. Arch looked at each of us with a rueful smile. He was a great one for dramatic effect.

“Well, you know Mr. Schlichtmaier is kind of short and stocky? He works out. I mean with weights. I’ve seen him over at the rec center.”

“Yes,” I said, impatient. “So?”

“Well, one day I asked him if he used steroids to pump himself up.”

“Arch!” I was shocked. “Why in the world would you do something like that?”

Schulz and Julian couldn’t help it; they dropped their cookies and started laughing.

“Well, I was thinking about starting to work out myself!” Arch protested. “And you know they’re always having those shows on TV about guys dying because they use those hormones. And now you have to be checked before races and games – “

“Arch,” I said. It was not the first time I longed to throw a brick through the television. “What were you saying about tattling?”

“So Schlichtmaier goes, ‘Steroids? Ach! Swear you won’t tell?’” Arch’s mouth twisted. “He laughed, though. I thought, weird, man. Anyway, that was a couple of days ago. Then the next day he says, ‘You won’t tattle on me?’ I say, ‘No problem, Mr. Schlichtmaier, you want to die of cancer, that’s up to you.’ He says, ‘You promise?’ Boring, man. I say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ And then the snake thing happened and I forgot all about it.”

Great. I looked at Schulz, who shrugged. Better to let go of it for now, especially after all we’d been through that day. Arch got up to clear the table. Julian offered to do the dishwashing. I walked out in the cool October night with Schulz.

“Sounds like a joke, Miss G.,” he said, once again reading my mind. “Way to get a twelve-year-old kid to relax, have a relationship. Make a joke about artificial hormones.”

“But you’re willing to suspect Audrey Coopersmith of murder based on the age of her truck.”

He said, “You know we’re already checking on Schlichtmaier because of what you told us about the other gossip. If anything turns up, I’ll let you know.”

When we arrived at the doors of his squad car, we did not kiss or hug. We did not act as if we were anything other than police officer and solid citizen. You never knew who might be looking. I felt happiness and sadness; I felt the tug of a growing intimacy drawing me as ineluctably as the receding tide takes the unwary swimmer out to unexpected depths. I looked into his eyes and thanked him aloud for his help. He saluted me, then pulled slowly away from the curb.

I ran back inside and picked up the phone with the thumb and little finger of my right hand, then dialed with my left. In the dining room I could hear the cheerful voices of the boys as they constructed their ship.

“Aspen Meadow Recreation Center,” came the answer on the other end after six rings.

“What time does the weight room open in the morning?” I whispered.

“Six. Why, you haven’t been here before?”

“I’ve been there, just not to the weight room.”

“Y’have to have an instructor the first time,” said the voice, suddenly bored.

“Okay, okay, put me down for an instructor,” I said quickly, then gave my name. A flash of inspiration struck. “Does, uh, Egon Schlichtmaier teach over there, by any chance? I know he’s a language teacher somewhere – “

“The German guy? Nah, Egon doesn’t teach. Sometimes he’s here in the morning, brings a teenager. I asked if he knew Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he goes, ‘He’s from Austria,’ like I was so dumb.” There was a pause. I could hear papers rustling. “I’ll put you down for Chuck Blaster. Twelve bucks. Wear sweats.” A dial tone.

Oh, God. What had I done? Chuck Blaster? That couldn’t possibly be his professional name, could it? But I replaced the receiver and crept up to bed.

He who wants to be a tattler…

I was not convinced it was a joke.

12

The throbbing in my finger woke me up Wednesday morning just as the sunrise began to brighten the horizon. I was lying there, feeling exceedingly sorry for myself when the radio alarm blasted me six inches off the mattress. Blasted, yes. Not unlike Blaster, now part of my ruse for a confrontation with Egon Schlichtmaier. But an early morning session lifting weights with one hand virtually out of commission was not my idea of fun. It seemed the mattress was begging for my return. I ignored its siren call and slipped carefully into a gray sweatsuit, stretched through the yoga salute to the sun and five more asanas, and tried not to think about lifting anything.

In the kitchen I wrote the boys a note. Gone to rec center weight room. This would engender surprised looks, no doubt. My double espresso spurted merrily into a new Elk Park Prep carry-along mug, a heavy plastic container that the seventh-grade parents had been requested (read “strong-armed”) to purchase at the beginning of the school year as a fund-raiser for the kids’ trip to a self-esteem workshop in Denver. Afterward Arch informed me he wasn’t going to think positive unless he absolutely had to. And nobody can make me, he added. That’s what I should have said when it was mug-buying time.

The grass underfoot was slick with frost, and my breath condensed into clouds of moisture in the cold October air. The van engine turned over with a purposeful roar. I ordered myself to think strong and muscular. Maybe I needed a positive-thinking workshop.

The van chugged obediently over streets whitened by a thin sheet of ice. Aspen Meadow Lake appeared around a bend – a brilliant, perfectly still mirror of early light. The evergreens ringing the shore reflected inverted pines that looked like downward-pointing arrows trapped in glass. Early snows had stripped the nearby aspens and cottonwoods of their leaves. Skeletons of branches revealed the previous summer’s birds’ nests, now abandoned. Without the trees’ masking cloak of foliage, these deep, thick havens of twigs looked surprisingly vulnerable.

Like Keith Andrews.

And so did our household seem vulnerable now too, with accidents or pranks that were becoming increasingly serious. Julian appeared to be coming apart at the seams.

And I had been nastily injured trying to deal with the Stanford rep’s one and only visit to Elk Park Prep. As the caffeine fired up the far reaches of my brain, I tried to reconstruct: Why was someone targeting Arch? If indeed the spider in the drawer was intended for someone, was I that someone?

Without meaning to, I wrenched the wheel to the left l and winced when pain shot up my finger. I’d have to watch the bite area with the weights. Either that or risk passing out. The Mountain Journal’s too cute headline would read: CATERER A DUMBBELL?

An image of the dreaded simile-speaking headmaster invaded my thoughts. Perkins certainly had not been -overeager to find the snake-hanger who plagued Arch. But in the minds of most, which was what Perkins was after all concerned with, he might be considered successful. In his decade at the school, Alfred Perkins had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for a much-publicized classroom expansion and renovation. He had masterminded a building program that included an outdoor pool and gymnasium. During parent orientation, some of the friendlier parents-of which I had to admit there were some – informed me that Perkins had superbly weathered the expected crises of administrative purges, teachers quitting or being fired, and students being expelled. Still, it seemed to me that Alfred Perkins hid behind his great wall of similes without letting too many folks know what was truly transpiring in his silvery-haired noggin. Perhaps that was how he and Elk Park Preparatory School had survived together unscarred, if not unruffled, for ten years.

Still, Perkins must view the past month as being unusually fraught with crises. First there was the splashy story in the Denver Post about the students’ slumping SAT scores. Then, if you believed Marla’s version of town gossip, there had been the threat of local newspaper coverage -by ambitious, clever Keith Andrews – of a sex scandal. Or some kind of scandal. After the coverage the Post had given the SAT scores, what they would do with a teacher – sleeps-with-students firebomb at the same school was barely imaginable. And then the most recent crisis, a whole order of magnitude more severe: the valedictorian ,had been killed-murdered on school property. Whether Headmaster Alfred Perkins could survive this lethal threat to his precious school’s shaky stability and not-so-pristine reputation remained to be seen. How heavily he was involved in, or even worried about, these setbacks was a question mark too.

The word from Julian was that Perkins’ tall, center-forward son, Macguire, despite his poor third-quarter standing in the senior class, had a good chance at a basketball school-North Carolina State, Indiana, UNLV. The acne-covered Perkins’ dull voice and drooping eyelids had been eerily impassive even in the face of the chaos surrounding his classmate’s brutal death. Macguire must be quite a disappointment to his status-seeking father, if not to himself. On the other hand, like many comics who acted the dunce, Macguire may have built up his own wall against caring.

I swerved too late to avoid a muddy puddle, then began the ascent to the rec center parking lot. Built in the seventies, the Aspen Meadow Recreation Center was a long, low redbrick building on the hill behind the town’s public high school. “The rec,” as it was affectionately known in town, predated the athletic club and catered to a different local clientele-working-class folks. Anyone who had to labor for a living didn’t have a prayer of an early morning workout at the infinitely tonier Aspen Meadow Athletic Club, which didn’t even open its doors until ten.

I pulled the van between the faded yellow lines of a space. To my astonishment, quite a few hardy souls were already parked in the rec center lot. Somehow, I had imagined I would be doing this bodybuilding work in solitude. I devoutly hoped these fitness freaks were swimming laps. The thought that someone I knew might see me in sweats was more than I could bear. My shoes gritted over gravel sprinkled with rock salt to melt the snow on the rec steps. Supported by an area-wide tax imposed by the residents themselves (since Aspen Meadow was fiercely proud of its unincorporated status), the rec was a no-nonsense sort of place with an indoor pool (shared with the public high school), a gym, a meeting room for senior citizens, and three racquetball courts. Here there were no steam rooms, no saunas, no massages, no tanning booths, no carpeted aerobics room, no outdoor pool. I didn’t even know where the rec’s weight room was until the woman at the desk, who at the age of forty had decided she needed braces, told me. She took my twelve dollars and then, through a mouth crisscrossed with vicious-looking metal, announced that they’d recently converted one of the racquetball courts.

“Folks just want to lift weights,” she said with what I thought was too lingering a look at my lower-body bulges.

I felt my heart sink with each step up to where people actually lifted heavy things because they thought it was good for them. I mean, these people wanted to be big, they wanted to gain bulk, and they didn’t want to do it by eating fettuccine Alfredo and sour cream cheesecake! They used powdered diet supplements! What were they, nuts? With some trepidation, I pushed open the door.

The place didn’t just smell bad, it smelled horrific. It was as if the walls had been painted with perma-sweat, guaranteed to stay wet. Sort of an unwashed rain-forest-in-the-gym concept.

When I was about to pass out from the stench, a big guy – I mean a really big guy – with lots of knots and bulges and popping-out muscles on his arms and chest and massive legs, sauntered up to me. He growled, “You Goldy?”

I swallowed and said, “Aah – “

His eyes, tiny sapphires set in an expanse of facial flesh, flicked over me contemptuously. “Don’t work out much, do you?”

Not a good start. I looked around at the different instruments of torture, things you pushed up on, things you pushed down on, things you watched your shoulders dislocate on in the bank of – yes! – mirrors. Men of all ages, and one woman who I at first thought was a man, were grunting and groaning and pumping. It didn’t look like fun.

“Really,” I improvised desperately, “I’m just looking for somebody… .”

“You’re looking for me,” said Big Guy. “Come on over here. I’m Blaster.”

Not one to argue with one so massive, I followed dutifully behind. I had a terrible blinding thought: What if I saw my ex-husband here? John Richard Korman would laugh himself silly. I cast a quick glance around. No Jerk. He preferred the more chi-chi athletic club. Thank God for tiny favors.

“First we stretch,” announced Blaster. Well now, stretching was something I knew about. I said hopefully, “I do yoga.”

Blaster did a prune face of disdain and thrust a long metal rod at me. He said, “Do what I do,” and then he threaded his huge arms around an identical metal rod. As he twisted his sculpted torso from side to side, I struggled to follow suit. But in the mirror I looked too much like a chunk of meat skewered on a shish kebab, so I stopped. Unfortunately I also let go. The rod Blaster had given me clattered to the floor with an unhappy thunkety-thunk.

“Hey!” he bellowed.

“Oh, don’t be too hard on her,” Hank Dawson said. “She had a really rough day yesterday. And she’s a big Bronco fan.” Unlike the young jocks in their scoopneck sleeveless shirts and tight black pants, Hank wore orange sweats emblazoned with the words DENVER BRONCOS – AFC CHAMPIONS! “Finger okay?” he inquired as he extricated himself from the thing he was pushing his elbows together in and walked slowly up to my tormentor and me. One thing I had noticed about how the men moved in the weight room: They swaggered around bowlegged, as if at any minute they were going to face off against Gary Cooper. Tromp, tromp, tromp, don’t be too hard on her tromp tromp a rough day tromp, draw on three, pod’ner.

“Actually,” I said, turning pained eyes up to Blaster, “I did suffer from a terrible spider bite yesterday… .”

But Blaster had already clomped off to what looked like a stretcher lying on an angle. Hank Dawson gave me a grim apologetic look. “Are you sure you’re well enough to do this, Goldy? Did you hear Elway pulled his shoulder in practice yesterday? I’m surprised you’re here.”

I said feebly, “So am I.”

He grinned. “You know they hate food people here.”

“I’m beginning to think this whole idea was a mistake.” I meant it.

Blaster roared, “Hey, you, Goldy! Get on this thing head down!” Several men turned to see if I would do as commanded. I scurried over to Blaster.

“You don’t seem to understand, I’ve changed my mind…”

He pointed at the stretcher. It was a long-fingered commanding point, not unlike when God brings a flaccid Adam to life on the Sistine ceiling. “Decline sit-ups,” he boomed.

“You see,” I ventured tremulously, “there was this black widow…”

The remorseless finger didn’t waver. “Best thing for it. Get on.”

A man of few words.

And so I started. First, sit-ups with my head lower than my feet on the stretcher, which seemed unfair. Why not at least be level? Then incline leg raises and crunches (sit-ups on a level surface-why bother when I’d just defied gravity the other way?), then more torso twists with the skewer rod, then leg presses, leg extensions, leg curls, bench presses, and front lat pulls.

I’m dying, I thought. No, wait-I’ve died and I’m in hell. In the mirror, my face was an unhealthy shade of puce. My finger throbbed. Rivulets of sweat ran down my forehead and turned into a veritable torrent inside my sweatshirt. Blaster announced we were almost done, and that I would do better next time. Hey, Blaster! There ain’t gonna be a next time.

Finally, finally, Egon Schlichtmaier walked in with none other than Macguire Perkins. Why I had not made an appointment just to see Schlichtmaier at the school was beyond me. I was going to need a heating pad for a week. No, not a heating pad – an electric sleeping bag and months of physical therapy.

“I need to talk to you,” I panted when the two of them sauntered, John Wayne-like, over to where I was slumped on the floor, collapsed and terminally winded. Before they could greet me, however, Blaster loomed suddenly overhead. I was looking straight at his calves. Each resembled an oven-roasted turkey.

Blaster’s beady blue eyes had a bone-chilling God-surveying-Sodom-and-Gomorrah look. “You’re not done.” His voice echoed off the dripping walls.

“Oh, yes, I am,” I said as I scrambled to my feet, not without exquisite and hitherto undreamed of pain. “Stick me with a toothpick. I’m as done as I’ll ever be.”

But he was waving me over to the Stairmaster, unheeding.

Egon Schlichtmaier said, “It’s not so easy the first time,” only it came out, “Id’s not zo easy ze furst time.”

He gave me his big cow-eyed look. “Like sex, you know.” The muscles in his back and arms flexed and rolled as he escorted me over to the aerobics area.

I hated him. I hated Egon Schlichtmaier for his muscles, I hated him for sleeping with those undergraduates, and I hated him for comparing what we were doing in this chamber of horrors to making love, which I had just begun to enjoy lately, thank you very much.

Blaster was punching numbers into the Stairmaster’s digital readout with that meaty finger I had come to dread. He looked at me impassively. “Get on. Ten minutes. Then you’re through.” And joy of joys, he stomped away. I faced Egon Schlichtmaier and scowled.

“Better do what Blaster says,” came the unnaturally low voice of Macguire Perkins; “Guy has eyes in the back of his head. We’ll get on the treadmills and keep you company.”

With such sympathetic exudings, the two of them mounted the treadmills and effortlessly began to walk. I wanted Macguire to go away, because what I was about to say concerned only Arch, Schlichtmaier, and me. Perhaps Macguire sensed my disapproval. He pulled out a headset while he was walking, tucked on earphones, and obligingly blissed out.

I stepped off the Stairmaster. Let Blaster come over and bawl me out. I dared him. I crossed my arms in front of Egon Schlichtmaier’s treadmill as Macguire Perkins began to screech along with his tape: “Roxanne!”

To Egon Schlichtmaier I said, “I understand you’ve had some difficulty with my son.”

Surprise flickered in his eyes. “I do not teach your son.”

“Roxanne!” squealed Macguire. “But was there something you didn’t want him to tattle about?” I replied evenly. “He said you were teasing him about something he said. He said you teased him day after day, and it was about tattling on you for using steroids. I simply will not stand to have my son harassed, by you or anyone else,” I narrowed my eyes at him.

And then I had a horrible thought: Maybe Arch wasn’t the only one Egon Schlichtmaier didn’t want to have tattle on him. A chill of fear scuttled down my back.

Damn. I should have left this whole thing to Schulz, as he was always telling me. Egon Schlichtmaier quietly turned off his treadmill and stepped off. He flexed his solid wall of muscles and I felt my heart freeze. Here I was among a bunch of bodybuilders, facing a possible multiple murderer.

“Roxanne!” screeched Macguire. His tall body rocked and heaved along the treadmill. His muscular chest shimmied to the beat. “Roxanne!”

In his thick German accent Egon Schlichtmaier said, “Yes, I did tease your son. But that was all it was. Your son has had a hard time fitting in socially at the school, as you mayor may not be aware.” He crossed his arms: a standoff. “When he accused me of using steroids, which is no small accusation, as you know – “

Especially with all the other accusations you’re facing, I thought but did not say.

“I tried to joke him out of it. I mean, I work out, but I’m no Schwarzenegger, although we sound alike, no? I think your son has been watching too much TV.”

I really hate it when people criticize Arch. Egon Schlichtmaier put his hands on his hips. He was muscled, this was true, and superbly proportioned. Just because I didn’t like him didn’t mean he couldn’t have an athlete’s body. But I had learned a few things about steroid use from one of the many parenting books I had read, Steroids cause mood swings. Egon Schlichtmaier may have been subject to these, who knew? “His reputed sex life certainly pointed to an abundance of testosterone. But he had none of the acne, no sign of the female-type breasts that chronic steroid-users frequently develop.

Drug abuse. What was it that Hank Dawson had said to me at church the day after Keith’s murder? I understand that kid’s had quite a history with substance abuse. The kid was the headmaster’s son. At the time, I had just ignored it; no one else had seemed to think the rumor was worth looking into. And if the police suspected marijuana or cocaine deals were going down at the school, Schulz would have at least mentioned it.

“Roxanne!” bellowed Macguire Perkins joyously as he jounced along the treadmill. My eyes were drawn to him. Not just his face, but his entire body, was covered with acne. And he looked as if he could use at least Maidenform 36C.

13

Why did you drive Macguire over here?” I demanded.

“His license has been suspended for a year. Drunk driving.” Egon Schlichtmaier screwed his face into paternalistic incredulity. “I try to help these kids. I do not threaten them.”

“Just trying to help, eh?” I didn’t mention the dalliances at C.O. Sometimes teachers didn’t know their own power. One thing 1 did know about steroids was that a large percentage of students who took them got them from coaches and teachers. “Does Macguire have problems with other drugs? I mean, that you know of.”

“Sorry?” Egon said as if he had not understood me. “Like steroids, for instance?”

His shoulder muscles rippled in a shrug. “Haven’t the foggiest.”

I peered hard at the darkly good-looking face of Egon Schlichtmaier. He was an oily sort of fellow – evasive, glib, hard to know.

I said, “Because of Keith’s death, I’ve been extremely concerned about things happening at the school. There was this snake, this… threat to Arch. Do you know anyone who would want to hurt my son?”

“No one.” And then he added fiercely, “Including me.”

“Okay.” I stalled. Perhaps I was overreacting. “I guess I misunderstood the tattling banter the two of you had.” Egon Schlichtmaier shrugged again. He closed his eyes and sighed asin, I’ll let it go this time. I tried to adopt a cheerful tone. “Think you’ll be staying at Elk Park Prep? I mean, past this year?”

He pondered the question. “What makes you think I would not?” I raised my eyebrows in ignorance. He seemed to accept that and shrugged again. “I have not decided.”

At that moment a horrific shriek and reverberating metallic crash cut the air. On the other side of the room, a crowd gathered to see what had happened. A short, stocky fellow had dropped one of the .largest barbells. I wondered how many pounds were involved, and if the barbell had landed on his toe. So much for clean and jerk.

Blaster started yelling at the poor guy who’d dropped the weight. Even Macguire pulled off his earphones. The Richter-scale vibration had come through the treadmill. With an air of exasperated defeat, Egon Schlichtmaier hunched toward the melee. But it seemed to me the teacher was only too glad to leave me standing there; we hadn’t exactly been having a pleasant conversation. Macguire slouched off after Egon. I noticed with delight that the preoccupied Blaster had his back turned to me.

Time to boogie.

I showered quickly and drove home. By the time I eased the van in behind the Range Rover it was almost eight A.M. The Range Rover? Julian and Arch usually left for school around 7:30. Panic welled up. Were they all right? Had they overslept? I bounded inside and up the stairs to check, and immediately regretted the move. My thighs screamed with pain from the workout.

“Julian,” I whispered after knocking on their door, “Arch!”

There were groans and the sounds of shuffling sheets. The air in the room was close, and it smelled of boy. As an only child, Arch took rooming with Julian as a great adventure. It had begun with a bunk bed. Of course, I hadn’t been able to afford a new one, and we wouldn’t be needing it after Julian went off to college. But a classified ad in the Mountain Journal had provided a secondhand two-tiered bed for fifty bucks. Unfortunately, it had cost another fifty for a carpenter to reinforce the upper bunk for Arch’s weight.

“Guys!” I said more loudly. I glanced around the room. Their school clothes lay in piles on a chair. A gel-filled ice pack was on the floor next to Arch’s slippers. “Is this a school holiday that I don’t know about?”

Julian lifted his head and barely opened puffy eyes. His unshaven, exhausted face was a mottled gray. He made unintelligible sounds along the lines of, “Gh? Hnh?” and then, “Oh, it’s you,” and flopped back on his pillow.

“Hello?” I tried again. “Arch?” But Arch only pulled himself under his covers, a typical maneuver. I bent down to pick up his slippers. They were wet.

“Julian,” I said with frustration, “could you wake up enough to tell me what is going on?”

With great effort Julian propped himself up on one elbow. He announced thickly, “Arch and I saw your note. Arch went outside to get the paper and slipped on the top porch step. He landed on his ankle and really hurt himself.” He yawned. “I took a look, and since it had already begun to swell, I put some ice packs on it and told him to go back to bed until you could decide what to do.” Another, longer, yawn. “I didn’t feel too good either. I’m really tired.” He let out a deep, guttural groan, as if even putting this much thought into discourse were an effort.

“Uh, Doctor Teller?” I said. “After you diagnosed and treated the ankle, and sent the patient back to bed, what?”

He opened an eye. “Well,” he said with just a shade of a grin cracking the expense of youthful brown beard, “since I knew you wouldn’t want Arch to be here alone, I mean after the rock and the snake and all, I decided to stay home with him. I can afford to miss a day.” He flopped over. “You’ll have to be the one who calls the school, though.”

Oh, what was the use? “All right, okay,” I said. Respecting kids’ assessment of a situation is a finely tuned parenting skill. Not a skill I was sure I had yet, but never mind. “Arch? May I please take a look at your ankle?”

He grunted an assent and thrust the offending foot from underneath his covers. Julian’s makeshift ice pack had already begun to unwrap, but there were still two frozen gel-filled packs inside a gently knotted terry-cloth towel. The ankle was swollen all right. The skin around the ankle was a pale blue.

“From the steps?” I was confused. “That’s awful.” Arch was not usually clumsy. In fact, his lack of athletic ability was in direct contrast to what I thought of as his physical grace, which of course you could see when he skied. Admittedly, as his mother I was somewhat prejudiced. “Can you stand on it?”

“I can stand on it and it is not broken,” said Arch.

“One more thing,” muttered Julian, his head on the pillow, his eyes closed. “I don’t know if I’m getting paranoid or something. Did you spill water out front?” When I said that I had not, he said, “Well, it looked to me as if someone had poured water over the steps. So anyone going out the front would fall and break his ass.”

Hmm. In any event, medical attention was not warranted, at least for now. I backed out of the room, but not before I heard Arch’s muffled and indignant voice say: “I did not break my ass!”

I went down to the kitchen. When other people’s lives get chaotic, they smoke, they drink, they exercise, they shop. I cook. At the moment it seemed we all needed the comfort of homemade bread. I made a yeast starter and phoned Marla. “You said you were coming over to help me today, remember? Please come now,” I begged to her husky greeting.

“Goldy, it’s the middle of the night, for crying out loud. Or the middle of winter. I had a late date last night and I’m hibernating. Call me when spring arrives.”

“It’s past eight,” I countered unrelentingly, “and it won’t be winter for another seven weeks. Come on over and I’ll make something special. Julian and Arch are both home. Arch fell and Julian’s… tired. Besides, I want you to tell me more about the lost teacher, Pamela Samuelson, and this Schlichtmaier fellow.”

“The former has been hard to find, and the latter is too young for you. Is Arch okay?”

“Just bedridden.”

She groaned. “Lucky him. I’m so glad I’m the one you call when the kids are incapacitated and you don’t have-anything better to do. But if you’re making something special… .”

“Doughnuts,” I promised. Marla was wild for them. She made a cooing noise and hung up.

Within moments I realized I didn’t have enough oil to fill even a quarter of a deep fryer. Well, necessity was the mother of all new recipes. Not only that, but I needed to develop something sweet but nutritious for the SAT breakfast that would follow Headmaster Perkins’ directive of including grains in everything possible. Why not oat bran in a doughnut? I’m sure kids would prefer that to an oat bran muffin any day, especially when those kind of muffins usually tasted, as if they’d come right out of a cement mixer.

I moved the college financial aid books that Julian had left askew on the counter, then sanctimoniously sifted soy flour with the all-purpose stuff and, ever virtuous, poured judicious measures of oat bran and wheat germ on top. After the yeast starter was warm and bubbly, I swirled in sugar, eggs, vanilla, and the flour mixture. I massaged it into a rich, soft pillow of dough that snuggled easily into a buttered bowl. After I’d put the whole thing into my proofing oven to rise, I put in a call to Schulz’s voice mail. I said I wanted to talk to him about Egon Schlichtmaier, who taught out at the school. And how was he doing on the pickup-truck situation, and Audrey’s background? As I hung up, Julian shambled in. He wore a T-shirt with the faded logo of some ancient rock concert, frayed jeans, and loafers with the backs crumpled down.

“Sorry I was so tired,” he mumbled. He looked around the kitchen hopefully. “What’re you putting together? You going to make some coffee?”

“Doughnuts in about an hour and a half,” I countered as I measured out Medaglia d’Oro and filled a pitcher with half-and- half. “Cappuccino in a couple of moments.”

Galaxy Douqhnuts

5 teaspoons (2 ź ounce envelopes) active dry yeast

1/3 cup warm water

2 ź cups plus 1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/3 cup solid vegetable shortening, melted

1 ˝ cups milk, scalded and cooled to lukewarm

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 large eggs

ź cup wheat germ

ź cup soy flour

ź cup oat bran

4 ˝ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted In a large mixing bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water. Allow the, yeast to soften for 5 minutes, then stir the yeast into the water along with the ˝ teaspoon sugar, Set the mixture aside to proof for 10 minutes; it should be foamy. Mix the melted shortening into the warm milk, then add the liquid to the yeast mixture along with ź cup of the remaining sugar, the salt, vanilla, eggs, wheat germ, soy flour, oat bran, and 1 ˝ cups of the flour. Beat vigorously until very well blended. Stir in the remaining flour and beat until smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in a warm, draft-free place until the dough is doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Punch the dough down, turn it out on a well-floured board, and pat it out so that the dough is about ˝ inch thick. Using a star cookie cutter, cut out the dough and place the doughnuts 2 inches apart on buttered cookie sheets. Allow the doughnuts to rise uncovered for another 20 to 30 minutes or until they are doubled. Preheat the oven to 400 . Mix the remaining 2 cups sugar with the cinnamon. Bake the doughnuts for about 10 to 15 minutes or just until they are golden brown. Dip them quickly into the melted butter and roll them in the cinnamon sugar. Makes about 3 dozen.

He stood in front of my calendar of upcoming events and read what was coming: “Clergy lunch… Tattered Cover dessert… SAT breakfast… Bronco brunch.

How do you figure out what to charge for these meals?” Even when he was out of sorts, Julian had great enthusiasm for catering. He wanted to know everything. It provided a context for our relationship, for his goal was to work as a hotel chef or have his own catering or restaurant business. Vegetarian, of course. While steaming the hot half-and-half for his cappuccino, I told him that the basic rule in catering was that you tripled the cost of your raw ingredients to include cooking, serving, and overhead. If clients wanted wine or any liquor, that was computed into the cost per person of the meal. I had sheets I gave to clients with the details of menus that were six to fifty dollars per person.

“What if clients giving a party disagree on what they should get and how much things should cost?”

I laughed. “Don’t get me started on weddings this early in the morning.”

“So tell me what you’re planning,” he asked as he sipped the cappuccino. We reviewed the menus and costs for the four upcoming events. He nodded and asked a question here and there. Then I asked how he was feeling about the college-application process.

“Okay.” He stood to fix himself another, weaker cup of cappuccino. “I guess.” He obviously did not want to chat about the applications, though, so I let it drop. He reached for the sugar bowl, then plopped back down at the kitchen table. I managed not to wince when he ladled four teaspoons of sugar into the second cup. Ah, well, perhaps I should be glad that it wasn’t drugs. Speaking of which.

“Tell me about the headmaster’s son,” I began conversationally.

“What’s there to tell?” he asked between tiny slurps; “Is he taking steroids?”

Julian choked on the coffee. Sputtering and coughing, he wiped his chin with a napkin I handed him and gave me a dark look. “Gee, Goldy, let’s not mince any words.”

“Well?”

Julian chewed the inside of his cheek. “You can’t ten anybody,” he began quietly.

“As if it weren’t obvious.”

Julian turned. “Macguire is under a lot of pressure.”

“From whom?”

“Gosh, Goldy, from whom do you think? Do I have to spell it out for you, like, like, uh” – he cast his eyes heavenward in imitation of the headmaster – “

“But Perkins, the son, I mean, isn’t an academic type. He can hardly be expected to follow in his father’s footsteps.”

Julian got up and carefully covered his cappuccino with waxed paper before placing it in the microwave. When the timer beeped, he took it out, Then he shook his head. “You’re not getting it.”

“Okay, okay. Macguire excels in athletics. But that doesn’t mean he needs to do a dangerous drug, does it? What happens if he gets caught?”

“He isn’t going to get caught. Besides, he’s not selling anything, so what’s the penalty? Everybody feels sorry for him.” He carefully sipped the heated cappuccino. Then he added darkly, “Almost everybody.”

Wait a minute. “Was this what Keith Andrews was going to expose in the Mountain Journal?”

Julian, exasperated, snapped, “When are you going to believe that none of us knew what Keith was writing for the newspaper?’” He ran the fingers of one hand through the blond mohawk. “That was the whole problem. I tried to get Keith to tell me what he was working on, and he said it would all come out. He made such a big deal about his secrecy, tapping away in the computer lab when no one was there. The CIA, man.”

The front doorbell rang. I told Julian it was probably Marla, then cursed the fact that I’d forgotten to sand the front steps.

He said, “Oh, that reminds me, I forgot, you got a call – “

“Hold that thought.” Marla had safely navigated the steps and now stood in our doorway in her usual seasonal colors. This morning, three days before Halloween, the outfit consisted of an extra-large orange and black suede patchwork skirt and mat thing jacket. She held a brown grocery sack. “You didn’t have to bring anything,” I said. “Don’t presume,” she announced haughtily as her plump body breezed past me. “It’s a hot melt glue gun, Styrofoam cone, and bag of baby Three Musketeers for Arch. Even sick people can do a craft project with candy. Especially sick people. And by the way, your front porch steps are covered with ice. Absolutely treacherous. Better put some salt on them.” So saying, she dropped the bag at the bottom of the stairs, then yodeled a greeting to Julian, whom she passed on her way into the kitchen.

“You see, about this call-” Julian attempted. “Just a sec.” I turned back to slam the front door against the cold. Before I could close it, though, a small foreign car arrived on the street directly in front of my house. A young woman whom I vaguely recognized as being from the Mountain Journal delicately stepped out and peered up at me.

Julian came up beside me. “This is it, I’m sorry I forgot to tell you. This woman called from the newspaper around 6:45. She asked if it would be okay to come by and interview you this morning. I thought you’d want it for free publicity. For the business. It wasn’t until I was about to hang up that she said it was about that night out at the headmaster’s house.” He added lamely, “I’m really sorry.”

“Just take care of Marla, will you?” I said under my breath. “And check the doughnut dough.” Then I shouted gaily to the intruder, “Come on in!” as if I were accustomed to having open house at nine o’clock every morning. “Just avoid the ice on the steps.” After lifting weights, the last thing I needed was to lug a bag of road salt up from the basement to make my steps safe for the world of journalism.

The reporter tiptoed gingerly up the far side of my front steps. Frances Markasian was in her early twenties, wore no makeup, and had straggly black hair that fell limply to the shoulders of her denim jacket. An ominously large black bag dangled from her right arm and banged against the knees of her tight jeans.

“You don’t have a camera in there, do you?” I asked once she was safely inside. I couldn’t bear the thought of photographs.

“I won’t use it if you don’t want me to.” Her voice was pure Chicago.

“Well, I’d really rather you wouldn’t,” I said sweetly, leading her out to the kitchen. Marla was already sipping cappuccino that Julian had made for her. Frances Markasian was introduced all around, and I asked her if it was okay if my friends stayed while she talked to me. She shrugged, which I took as consent. I offered her some coffee.

“No thanks.” She dipped into her bag, brought out a diet Pepsi, popped the top, and then dropped two Vivarin through the opening.

Marla watched her, open-mouthed. When Frances Markasian took a long swig from the can, Marla said, “Mission control, we have ignition. Stand by.”

Frances ignored her and pulled a pen and pad out of the voluminous bag. “I understand you were the caterer the night of the Andrews murder?”

“Well, er, yes.” I had a sinking feeling she was not going to be asking about the menu.

Julian must have felt the reporter’s eyes on him, because he got up, punched down the risen dough, and began to roll it out to cut doughnuts with a star cookie cutter.

“You want to tell me what happened?” she said.

“Well…” I began, then gave her the briefest possible account of the evening’s events. Her pen made scritching noises as she took notes.

“They’ve been having some other problems out at that school,” she said when I had finished and was checking on the doughnuts, which had almost finished their brief rising.

“Really?” I inquired innocently. “Like what?” I wasn’t going to give her anything. My previous experience with the Mountain Journal had been negative. They’d hired a food critic, who had viciously trashed me. The critic had been conducting a private vendetta in print. By the time I got the mess exposed, the unapologetic Mountain Journal had moved on to reports of elk herds moving through mountain neighborhoods.

“Problems like snakes in lockers,” Frances said. I waved my hand dismissively. “Seventh grade.”

“Problems like a headmaster who might be having trouble raising money if bad news got out about the school,” Frances continued matter-of-factly. “Take this dropping-SAT-score thing – “

“Oh, Ms. Markasian, sweetheart,” Marla interrupted, “that news is so old, it has mold on it. Besides, if you were worried about your academic reputation, you wouldn’t kill your top student, now, would you?” Marla rolled her eyes at me. “Those goodies ready?”

I turned to Julian, who wordlessly slid the risen doughnuts into the heated oven. “Fifteen minutes,” he announced.

“Know anything about that headmaster?” Frances persisted. She tapped her pen on the pad.

“I know as much as you do,” I told her. “Why don’t you tell us about the story Keith Andrews was working on for your paper?”

“We didn’t know what it was,” she protested, “although he had been working on it for some time, and he’d promised something big.” She tilted her Pepsi can back to drain the last few drops. “We were going to read it when he was done and then decide whether to run it or not. If it was a timely story. You know, truthful.”

“You have such a good reputation for fact-checking,” I said with a lying smile.

Without a shred of self-consciousness she tossed her can across the room into one of the two trash bags resting against my back door. Arch was supposed to take them out, but he was incapacitated.

“Three points,” I said. “Except we recycle.” I retrieved the can and dropped it into the aluminum bin in the pantry. I hoped she would take the hint and decide it was time to wrap things up. But no.

“How about the headmaster’s son? Macguire Perkins? He drove his father’s car through a guard rail on Highway 203 over the summer. Blood alcohol level 2.0.”

I shrugged. “You know as much as I do.” Frances Markasian looked around my kitchen, her shallow black eyes impassive. The smell of the baking doughnuts was excruciating. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. “I understand some of the Elk Park Prep students and parents are pretty competitive. Would do anything to get into the right college.”

I crossed my arms. “Yeah? Like what?”

She tapped her mouth with her pen but gave no answer. “Keith Andrews was the valedictorian. Who was next in line?”

Before I could answer, Arch came limping into the kitchen. I was thankful for the distraction. Julian asked Arch to join him out in the living room to make a sculpture out of the Three Musketeers.

“Wow,” said Arch. “At nine-fifteen in the morning?”

“We’re going to build a fire too. Is that all right? It is kind of cold.” When I gave him the go-ahead, he said, “Can you handle getting the doughnuts out of the oven?”

“She’s an old pro at removing cookie sheets,” said Marla. “Besides, I think Ms. Markasian is almost done, isn’t she?”

Frances Markasian closed her eyes and said, “Huh.” She rounded her back and stretched her arms out in front of her. Journalistic meditation. The buzzer went off and I took the doughnuts out. Julian had prepared a pan of melted butter and a mountain of cinnamon sugar, so I quickly dipped and rolled, dipped and rolled. I brought the first plate of plump, warm doughnuts over to the table and placed them in the sunlight, so that cinnamon sugar sparkled on the veil of melted butter. Marla delicately lifted one onto a plate and then took a huge bite.

“Please have one,” I said to the reporter.

She shook her head. Frances Markasian seemed to be unable to decide whether to share something with me. After a moment she put her pen and pad away in her enormous purse. “I’ll tell you like what parents will do. Last week we got a call at the paper saying we should run a story on how Stan and Rhoda Marensky had sent a full-length mink coat to the director of admissions at WilIiams.”

I couldn’t help it. My mouth fell open.

“Listen,” said Marla in her one-upsmanship voice. She reached for her second doughnut. “I wouldn’t spend a winter in Massachusetts if I had a mink house.”

At that moment, yells erupted from the living room. Julian banged through the kitchen door. A cloud of smoke billowed in behind him.

“Something’s wrong!” he shouted. “The flue’s open but the smoke won’t go up! I’ll help Arch out the front. You all need to get out!” His face was white with fear.

“Out the front, hurry!” I yelled at Marla and Frances. We bolted.

Julian and Arch were already halfway down the front walk by the time we three adults came hustling through the front door. Julian had Arch’s arm draped around his shoulder and the two were half skipping toward the street. Frances Markasian reached the sidewalk first. With frighteningly effortless ease she spun around and scooped her camera out of her big black bag. Then she hoisted it and took a picture of Marla, midair, grasping a freshly baked oat bran doughnut, as she slipped on the iced steps and broke her leg.

14

With sirens blaring and lights flashing, the fluorescent chartreuse AMFD trucks arrived in a matter of moments, proving the local adage that the fastest thing about our town was the fire department. One of my neighbors had seen the smoke billowing out of the window Julian had hastily opened, and she’d put in the call. Over the incessant buzz of the smoke alarm, I screamed to Julian to stay out in the street with Arch. A wad of fur hit my calves and was gone – Scout the cat making a streaking escape. Flames were consuming my home. But I refused to leave Marla’s side at the bottom of the front steps. Firemen clumped by up into the house. Marla clenched my hand and sobbed copiously. My schooling in Med Wives 101 adjudged it to be a broken right tibia. I shrieked for somebody to call an ambulance.

The firefighters rapidly assessed the situation and put a ladder up to the roof. Minutes later, clad in schoolbus-yellow protective gear, the first fellow descended the ladder, holding a blackened piece of plywood and shaking his head. With a screaming siren, the ambulance arrived and carted Marla off to a Denver hospital. I hugged her carefully and promised to visit just as soon as the smoke cleared. She begged me to call her other friends so that everyone could know what had happened. Marla’s idea of hell is enduring pain alone.

“What was that board?” I demanded of the one volunteer firefighter I recognized, a gray-haired real estate agent who had originally sold the house to John Richard and me.

“You had something on top of your chimney.”

“Well, yes, but… how did it get there?”

“You have some gutter or roof work done? This your first use of the fireplace this season?”

“It is not my first use of the fireplace this season, and the only work I’ve had done on the house recently was a security system I had put in this summer.” The blackened board lay propped against one of the tires of the AMFD truck. Two firemen stood in front of it, deep in conversation.

“Look, Goldy, it could have been a lot worse. We had this same thing happen to a summerhouse over by the lake. Smoke pouring everywhere. Usually it means you put too much paper on the logs, the chimney needs to be swept, or some birds have built a nest. Anyway, our guys went up. First one took off a nest, sure enough. Then he looked down the chimney and fainted. Second guy looked down the chimney and fainted. I had smoke, flames, and two guys out cold on the roof. Had to call an ambulance for the firefighters. Turns out this burglar had tried to enter the house through the chimney, got stuck, died of asphyxiation. In the spring some birds built a nest. Then the owners came back and built a fire. Once our guys pulled out that nest, they looked down at a perfectly preserved skeleton.”

I clenched my head with both hands. “Is this story supposed to reassure me?”

He shrugged one shoulder and moved off to help his men reload their equipment. The emergency, as far as they were concerned, was over. Several neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk to see what was going on. I asked if anyone had seen a person or persons on my roof recently. All negative. Then I crossed over to the house of a young mother, the only person on our street who had a good view of my place. Her forehead furrowed as she fixed the shoelace of one child and then gave antibiotic to another. She was raising four children under the age of six, and whenever anyone stupidly asked if she worked, she threw a dirty diaper at them. She told me she’d been preoccupied ferrying her kids to the pediatrician – three, times in the last week – and no, she hadn’t seen anyone.

Julian announced that he and Arch had decided they might as well go to school, was I going to be all right? I told them to go ahead. Frances Markasian stood on the sidewalk, snapping photos, as if the .fire were the biggest news event to hit Aspen Meadow this century. The crash of the Hindenburg had less photo coverage. She took a picture of me as I walked up to her.

“I thought you promised not to do that.” My life was beginning to feel out of control.

“Before, you weren’t news,” she said impassively. “Now you’re news. Any idea how this could have happened?”

“Zero,” I mumbled. “Did you see that plywood board they took off the chimney?” She nodded. “Maybe some workmen left it over the summer. I wish you wouldn’t publish those pictures. People will think I burned something In my kitchen.

“If something more exciting happens before Monday, no problem.” She shoved the camera into her bag and drew out a cigarette. No breakfast, diet cola with caffeine tabs, and now a smoke. I would give this woman ten years. She inhaled hungrily. “Listen, you were pretty discreet in there about the competition situation out at Elk Park Prep. So was I. But you’re wrong.”

“Oh?” I said innocently. “How’s that?”

“Well.” Fran blew a set of perfect smoke rings. “Parents seem to think we have an endless amount of newspaper space to run articles about their kids. First we did an article about Keith Andrews in September, at his request.” She tapped the cigarette, scattering ashes on her denim jacket. “Maybe you saw it: ‘First-place Andrews blends academics with activism.’ I mean, Keith helped us a lot during the summer covering the Mountain Rendezvous and the arts festival, so we figured we owed him the article when he asked. Anyway. We ran the piece and Stan Marensky called us, shrieking his head off. Said Keith Andrews had never marched in front of his store the way he claimed. Said the kid didn’t know a mink from an otter and couldn’t care less about the anti-fur movement. So we went back and asked Keith about it, and he confessed that he had used a wee bit of exaggeration, but that the profile was really going to help his Stanford application.” She exhaled another batch of white O’s.

“If only you all would check facts before you print things,” I murmured.

She flicked ashes. “Hey, what do you think we are, The New York Times? This was supposed to be a human interest thing. Then Hank Dawson shows up on our doorstep, waving a copy of the newspaper. He figures we should run a full-page profile on his daughter for our ‘Who’s Who’ section. When we say his daughter isn’t anybody special, Dawson yells he’s going to withdraw all of his cafe advertising. We say, well, he can buy a page of advertising for his daughter, and he stomps out. Then he cancels both his advertising and his subscription.”

The “Who’s Who” page usually ran stories of veterinarians saving elk calves and national celebrities showing up at local Fourth of July celebrations. If we weren’t talking the Times, we weren’t exactly talking People, either.

“Perhaps you should have run the profile…” I murmured.

“Clearly, you don’t read the Mountain Journal” – she crushed the cigarette savagely beneath her toe – “because we did. In ‘Mountain Arts and Crafts’ there was an article on little Greer Dawson and the Bronco jewelry she was making to peddle at her parents’ cafe. Earrings dangling with miniature plastic orange footballs. Necklaces made of rows of teensy-weensy football helmets.” Frances groped in the bulging bag and brought out a packet of candy corn. Dessert. She offered me some; I declined. “Now, how many women do you think actually buy jewelry like that? That article proved every stupid stereotype people have of rural journalism. We got the cafe’s advertising back, but it was still a mistake because who comes in the next week? Audrey Coopersmith, whining that we should run an article on Heather and how her scientific know-how saved the ice cream social at the Mountain Rendezvous – “

“How do you save an ice cream social?” She finished the candy corn and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Oh. You know, they have such a small power source in the homestead next to the park where the Rendezvous is held.” I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. “The freezer holding the Haagen-Dazs blew the fuses, and Heather Coopersmith saved the day by rewiring the whole thing… we are talking way boring. .We didn’t run an article for Audrey Coopersmith, and she cancelled her subscription. So what. I have to go. Sorry about your chimney.” And with that she climbed into her car and discarded the candy corn bag out the window. She lit up another cigarette, revved the engine, and chugged away.

I picked up the bag from the street and went back I into the house. The smoke alarm had stopped its ear-splitting buzz. I opened all the windows. After the commotion, the place felt absurdly quiet; it smelled like a camping site. I jumped when the phone rang – Tom Schulz. I told him what had happened, ending with poor Marla.

“How’d the board get over your chimney?” he wanted to know.

“That was my question. Think I should get the security people to come back out here?”

“I think you should move out of your house for a while. Go to Marla’s, maybe?” His voice was slow and serious.

“No can do, sorry to say. Her cabinets would never I pass the county health inspector. Anyway, whoever is doing this seems to know I have a security system, so I’m safe except for pranks.”

He asked where the boys were, and I told him.

“Listen, Goldy, I don’t care about your system. I don’t want you in that place alone, especially at night.”

I ignored this. “Thanks for the worry. Now, I’ve got a question for you. What was the story on the fuses at the headmaster’s house? I mean, when the fuses blew that night, that was the moment that Keith Andrews’ killer made his move, wasn’t it?”

“There was a timer attached to one set of wires that had been stripped and coiled together. It was planned, sure, but you knew that, didn’t you?”

I told him about the Rendezvous and Heather Coopersmith’s expert knowledge of wiring.

“It’s a long shot,” he said, “but I’ll go question her again. What’s your take on that kid and her mother, anyway?”

_”Oh, I don’t know.” My head ached, my finger throbbed, and I didn’t want to go into the details of Audrey’s bitterness, or how long it seemed to be lasting. “Audrey’s unhappy, you saw that. Did the headmaster’s place turn up anything else? I saw your guys out there sweeping the place after the snow melted.”

“It did, as a matter of fact. Makes your discovery of the credit card in Rhoda Marensky’s coat somewhat more interesting. Out by the sled there was a gold pen with the name Marensky Furs.”

“Oh, my God.” “Problem is, Stan Marensky says the pen could have come from anywhere, and Rhoda Marensky swears she didn’t leave her coat out at the headmaster’s house.”

“Liar, liar, raccoon on fire. Mr. Perkins specifically told me she’d be so happy to get it back.”

“Headmaster Perkins said the coat just appeared in his closet the day of the dinner and he called Rhoda, who then forgot to take it with her after the lights went out. But she had been missing it for a couple of weeks. She says.”

“If that is true, then whoever is doing all this is a phenomenally elaborate planner.” I thought for a minute, and remembered only a glimpse of a fur-clad Stan Marensky whisking Rhoda out the headmaster’s front door after the lights had come back on and order had been restored. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with the Marenskys, their store, or pens from their store. What I don’t understand is why me? Why a rock through my window, why ice on my steps, why a board over my chimney? I don’t know anything. I never even met Keith Andrews.”

“I swear, I wish you’d come to my place for a while, Miss G. Or more than a while, if you’re still of a mind…”

“Thank you, but I’m staying put.”

“You’re in danger. I’m going to talk to the team here about setting up some surveillance – “

I let out a deep breath.

He said, “I’ll get back to you.”

As usual, cooking cleared the head and calmed the nerves. I needed both. First I froze the doughnuts, which, miraculously, weren’t smoke-damaged. Then I set about planning cooking times for the priests’ luncheon on Friday, the Tattered Cover affair on Halloween night, and the SAT breakfast on Saturday morning. I called my supplier and ordered the freshest sole she could find, plus fresh fruit.

The rest of that day and the next passed placidly enough. I picked Marla up from the hospital Thursday morning and took her back to her house. She didn’t want me to baby her. With all her money, Marla could pick anyone she wanted to take care of her; she had opted for a private nurse, arranged while she was still in the hospital. Arch’s ankle healed nicely and gave him the much-desired excuse from gym class. He announced brightly that he was resting so he’d be completely better for skiing over the weekend. Julian sprinkled road salt on the iced front steps before the supplier arrived with her crates of boxes. I tried to believe that the board-over-the-chimney person had not also been responsible for the ice hazard. But that was sure to be wishful thinking.

Miss Ferrell called on Thursday afternoon and said she wanted to go over Julian’s list for colleges with me after the SATs on Saturday, instead of our planned chat beforehand. She had too much organizing to do before the tests began, and she wanted to give me her full attention. I wasn’t one of his parents, but she wanted to feel that some responsible adult was involved. “Julian can come too, if you like,” she added. But I said I would feel better if she and I could just have a little time together alone. After all, I was new at this.

Friday morning brought gloomy clouds spitting snowflakes. Because his father was picking him up at three to go directly to Keystone, Arch busied himself packing up his ski gear before school. I washed crisp spinach leaves and poached sole fillets in white wine and broth. Then I chopped mountains of cranberries and pecans for the Sorry Cake. When I was putting the cake pans into the oven, Julian said he’d had an invitation to spend the night at a friend’s house; they would go to the bookstore talk arid the SAT testing together. But he was concerned – would I be all right alone? It was all I could do to keep from laughing. I told him if I could survive all those years with John Richard Korman, I could survive anything. Besides, with both boys gone, I knew just what guest to call.

I gave the boys pumpkin muffins for breakfast and helped Arch lug his skis, boots, and poles out to the Range Rover. Saying good-bye to him before he went off with his father was always difficult; before a holiday, even Halloween, it was excruciating.

At the last minute, Arch dashed upstairs to get his high-powered binoculars. “Almost forgot! I might be able to see the Andromeda galaxy once they turn out the night-skiing lights. You can see Andromeda in the winter, but never in the summer!” he hollered over his shoulder. When the boys were finally ready, I sent them off over their halfhearted protests with homemade popcorn balls and packets of candy corn to share with their friends. They took off in a mood of high good cheer. Halloween was not a school holiday, but the snow, the buttery scent of popcorn, and Arch’s cone sculpture of Three Musketeers bars made the two boys laugh giddily after a week ” that had been grueling for us all.

Despite his upbeat mood as he drove off, Julian’s taut face and bitten nails told another story. During the past two weeks, he had spent hours at the kitchen table, studying financial aid forms and making lists of numbers. When he wasn’t doing homework, he pored over tomes on test-taking and SAT review. Along with the rest of his class, Julian had taken the PSATs his sophomore year and the SATs his junior year. But this third time was it, he told me, the big one, make or break, do or die. These were the scores the colleges looked at to make their decisions.

I had tried to drill him a little bit Thursday night, using the SAT review, but it had not been a pleasant task. I mean, who made up these tests? For example, one analogy asked, handsome is to corpulent as beautiful is to …obese, ugly, attractive, or dead? Well, didn’t that depend on whether or not you thought corpulence is an attractive trait? I happened to think that it was, and argued to that effect. And when, I demanded, were you going to use the word epigrammatic in day-to-day conversation? Now, I am all for reading and vocabulary-building, but as our generation used to say, let’s get relevant. I told Julian he didn’t need to know that one. He sighed. What did me in, though, was “My friend is a philanthropist, therefore he … goes to church with his family, gives away his possessions, pays off his credit cards, or plays the glockenspiel.” Without hesitation I told Julian that he would payoff the credit cards, and maybe play the glockenspiel in the evening for the neighbors. Julian suggested I forget trying to test him, because the correct answer was “gives away his possessions.” I argued that if you pay a high rate of interest on credit cards, you hurt your family, which should be your first area of philanthropy. Julian quietly closed the big book. I immediately apologized. The smile he gave me was pinched and ironic. But the review session was over. When Julian had retired to his room, r morosely poured myself a Cointreau and zapped the kernels for the popcorn balls. So much for philanthropy beginning at home.

On Halloween morning, with this spiritual thought still rocketing around in my head, I finished icing the Sorry Cake and took off for the church. A brief wash of snowflakes marked the end of the flurry. Wisps of cloud drifted upward from the near mountains. In the church parking lot sat only two cars: the secretary’s pale blue 1 Honda, and a gleaming new Jeep Wagoneer that I guessed belonged to the Marenskys – who else would have the license plate MINX? Nowhere in sight was Father Olson’s Mercedes 300E, a four-wheel-drive vehicle that he claimed he needed to visit parishioners in remote locations. Well, our priest was probably off having one of his favorite things, a hilltop experience.

When I came through the church door with the first bowls of fruit, Brad Marensky almost mowed me down.

Oh, I m sorry, he yelped, and grabbed a teetering bowl of orange slices from my hands. While he was getting control of the bowl, I took a good look at him. Of medium build, Brad was a younger, more handsome version of his father, Stan. There was the same curly hair, jet-black instead of salted with gray, the; same high-cheek boned and olive-toned handsome face, smooth rather than deeply lined with anxiety. He also had his father’s dark eyes. I imagined those eyes had elicited romantic interest from more than one girl at Elk Park Prep. In catching himself and the bowl, and then sidestepping me, Brad moved like an athlete. Even without the aid of the Mountain Journal’s sports section, Brad’s all-round prowess, and his father’s relentless drills, were well known. The mothers at the athletic club made a great joke of Stan Marensky’s famous screech, “Come on, Brad! Come on, Brad!” Sometimes the coaches had to shut Stan up; they couldn’t make themselves heard.

“Gosh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to crash into you. Aren’t you… doesn’t Julian live at your…”

“Yes,” I said simply. “Julian Teller lives with my son and me. And I know your parents.”

He blushed. “Well, sorry about the” – he looked down at what he had rescued – “the fruit.” He seemed tongue-tied. He held the bowl awkwardly, as if he were not quite sure what to do with it. Come to think of it, what was he doing in church on Halloween morning, anyway? Could the seniors just skip classes whenever they wanted?

“What about you? You okay?” I asked.

His face turned an even deeper shade of red. Avoiding my eyes, he pivoted on his heel and carefully placed the bowl on the tile floor next to the baptismal font. He turned back to me, pressed his lips together, and lifted his chin. Brad Marensky was not all right, that much was clear.

“I have to go,” he said. “The person I wanted to see isn’t here.” His control slipped, and he added, “Uh, you don’t know when Father Olson will be back, do you?”

“For lunch. I’m catering.”

“Right, right, the caterer. A meeting, the secretary told me.” He glanced around the cold, cavernous church. No altar candles were lit. The brass crucifix at the front of the church glowed with reflected light from the sacramental candle. In the pale light the teenager’s face had the look of a jaundiced ghost.

Sorry Cake

Cake:

2 cups all-purpose flour

ž teaspoon baking soda

˝ teaspoon salt

˝ cup solid vegetable shortening

˝ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 2/3 cups sugar

6 large eggs, separated

1 cup buttermilk

1 tablespoon freshly grated orange zest

2 cups Shredded Wheat cereal, broken into shreds

1 cup cranberries, quartered

˝ cup chopped pecans

ź teaspoon cream of tartar

Frosting:

˝ 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

ź cup ( ˝ stick) unsalted butter, softened

3 cups confectioners’ sugar

1 tablespoon fresh orange juice, approximately

1 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest

Preheat the oven to 350°. To make the cake, sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Beat the shortening with the butter until well combined. Cream in the sugar and beat until fluffy and light. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time until well combined. Add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Stir in the orange zest, cereal, cranberries, and pecans. Beat the cream of tartar into the egg whites and continue beating until stiff. Gently fold the whites into the cake batter. Pour into 3 buttered 8-or 9-inch round cake pans. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack.

To make the frosting, beat the cream cheese with the butter until well combined. Gradually add the confectioners’ sugar and orange juice; beat until creamy and smooth. Stir in the orange zest. Frost the tops and sides of the cake. Makes 14 to 16 servings.

“Brad, are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to sit down for a while?”

He lifted an eyebrow and considered. “I saw you at that college application meeting.”

“Yes, well, I needed to see Miss Ferrell about my son, Arch. He’s… having some problems at school.” When he didn’t respond, I rushed on with, “Maybe you’d like to help me in the kitchen until Father Olson gets here. When I’m waiting for something, it always helps me to take my mind off – “

“Julian says you’re good to talk to.”

“Oh. He does?”

He regarded me again with that same lost-Bambi expression, and then seemed to make a decision. “I’m here because of something in the bulletin.”

“Something…”

His teeth gnawed his bottom lip. “Some discussion they’re having.”

“Oh, the committee! Yes, they’re talking about penance and faith, I think. I’m… not sure the meeting is open to the public.” I try to be delicate. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

“Wait.” His eyes widened. “You’re the one who found Keith, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, but – “

“Oh, God,” he said with a fierce dejection that twisted my heart. His shoulders slumped. “Things are such a mess… :’

“Look, Brad, come on out to the kitchen for just a while – “

“You don’t understand why I’m here.” Tears quivered in his protest. And then he said, “I need to confess.”

15

“Let’s go sit in a pew,” I whispered. I had fleeting thoughts of calling Schulz, of telling this troubled boy to wait for Father Olson. But there was urgency behind Brad’s distress and I wanted to help him. Whatever his problem was, I couldn’t absolve him. Nor would I feel comfortable turning him in. He’d have to do that himself.

We slipped into the last hard wooden pew and sat down awkwardly. Think, I ordered myself. If Julian said I was good to talk to – a surprise – then maybe all I had to do was listen.

“I … I’ve been stealing,” said Brad.

I said nothing. He looked at me and I nodded. His handsome face was racked with pain. He seemed to be expecting something. “Go on,” I told him. He was silent. In a low voice I prompted him. “You wanted to talk about stealing.”

“I’ve been doing it for a long time. Years.” He hunched his shoulders as if he were small and very lost. Then he straightened his back and let out a ragged breath. “I felt good at first. Taking stuff made me feel great. Strong.” With sudden ferocity he said, “I loved it.”

I mm-hmmed

“When Perkins used to say in assemblies, we don’t need locks on the lockers at Elk Park Prep, I would laugh inside. I mean, I would just howl.” Brad Marensky wasn’t laughing now. He wasn’t even smiling. His mouth was a grim, suffering slash as he silently contemplated the diamond-shaped window above the altar. I wondered if he was going to continue.

“It wasn’t for the stuff,” he said at last. “I had plenty of stuff. My parents have money. I could have had any coat in the store I wanted. My biggest thrill was ripping off a jean jacket from somebody’s locker.” A silent sob racked his lean body. He seemed to want to cry, but was holding it in. Perhaps he was afraid someone would walk through the doors. The muffled clatter of the ancient mimeo machine in the church office came across as a distant crunch, pop; crunch, pop.. A cool, hushed quiet emanated from the stone floor and bare walls. Brad Marensky’s confession was a murmur within that sanctified space.

“I was going to quit. That was what I swore to myself. I had even decided to give something back… . I don’t even know why I’d taken this thing from a kid’s locker.”

He seemed poised to go off into another reverie. I thought of the table and food I had to prepare, of the twelve committee members who would be arriving within the hour. “Another kid’s locker,” I prodded gently.

“Yeah. Then one day a couple of weeks ago, I decided to put this thing back. After school. When I was slipping it back in and closing the locker, the stupid French Club let out and all these kids filed into the hall. I just, like, froze. I figured Miss Ferrell, Keith Andrews, the other kids, even your son-sorry, I don’t know his name-saw me and thought that instead of giving something - back, I was taking it.” He sighed. “It was the new Cure tape. I don’t even like the Cure.”

“Wait a minute. A tape? Not money, or a credit card?” I blurted out the question without thinking.

“Huh?” He said the word as if he’d been punched, and gave me a puzzled glance. “No. I took money, but not credit cards. You can really get in trouble for doing that.” He looked uneasily at the front door. Before he finished, however, there was one thing I needed to know.

“If you thought Arch – my son – might have seen you, and was going to tell, did you try to stop him? With a rattlesnake in his locker? And a threatening note?”

“No, no, no. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Okay. Go ahead, I interrupted you:” But he couldn’t. He started to cry. He cradled his head and sobbed, and impulsively I put my arms around his shoulders and murmured, “Don’t… don’t cry, please… it’s going to be okay, really. Don’t be so hard on yourself, everybody messes up. You tried to make things right… .”

“That was the weird part,” he whispered into my shoulder. “As soon as I decided to quit, everything went wrong. First someone smashed Keith’s windshield…”

“When was that, exactly?” Brad sat up and swiped at his tears. “The day the Princeton rep came. I remember because Keith seemed not to be bothered by the car, he just went on as calm as ever. He was early for the rep and had a zillion questions about the eating clubs and whether they’d take his summer school credits from C.U., that kind of thing.”

“A zillion…”

“Yeah. But later I heard he was writing this article for the newspaper, and I got scared. So I did steal something. Just one last thing, I told myself. Oh, God” – his words came out in a rush – “then he was killed.” His brown eyes were sunken and fearful. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill him. I’d never do something like that. Then somebody put that snake in your son’s locker.” In disbelief, he shook his head. “It’s like everything went haywire as soon as I decided to go straight.”

“But after you stole that last thing, you did try to get rid of it. You put the credit card in your mother’s coat pocket.”

His boyish face wrinkled. “What is this with the credit card? I didn’t take a credit card, and I don’t know what the story is on my mother’s coat, because I didn’t steal that, either. After Keith saw me putting the Cure tape back, I was sure the article he was writing for the local paper was about stealing. About me. So I pried open the door to Keith’s computer cubbyhole and took his disks. I thought I’d find the article for the newspaper and erase it.” He reached under his sweatshirt and pulled out two disks. “There’s an article in here, but it’s not about stealing. Can you take these? I can’t stand to have them anymore. I’m afraid if someone finds them, I’ll get into big trouble. Maybe you could give them to the cops… I don’t want a criminal record.” He didn’t say it, but the question in his eyes was Are you going to turn me in?

I held the disks but did not look at them. This was a boy in torment. I wasn’t the law. But there was something else.

“Look at me, Brad.” He did.

“Did Keith know you were stealing?”

“I am almost positive now that he didn’t,” he said without hesitation. “Because if Keith had something on you, or if he didn’t like you, he couldn’t keep it to himself. Once he tried to blackmail my father over some tax stuff. When Schlichtmaier called on him, he would say, Heil Hitler.” He thrust his hands through his dark hair, then shuddered. “After the French Club got out that day, he never said anything to me. I figured I’d gotten oft But then somebody killed him. Do you believe me? I can’t stand having this hanging over my head anymore.”

Softly, I said, “Yes, I believe you.” Brad had chosen me to help him. I was duty bound to do at least that. I met his eyes with a level, unsmiling gaze. “Have you decided to stop stealing?”

“Yes, yes,” he said as his eyes watered up again. “Never again, I promise.”

“Can you give back what you took?”

“The cash is gone. But… I can put the stuff in the lost and found. I will, I promise.”

“All right.” Tenderness again welled up in my heart. The world thought this vulnerable boy had everything. I put my hands on his shoulders and murmured, “Remember what I said a few minutes ago. It’s going to be okay. Believe me?” Tears slid down his sallow cheeks. His nod was barely perceptible. “I’m going to leave you now, Brad. Say a prayer or something.”

He didn’t move or utter another word. After a moment I slid out of the pew. As I stood in the aisle, trying to remember what I’d done with the bowl of orange slices, Brad turned and caught my hand in a crushing grip.

“You won’t tell anybody, will you? Please say you wont.”

“No, I won’t. But that doesn’t mean people don’t know. Like Miss Ferrell. Or whoever.”

“Mostly I’m worried about my parents…”

“Brad. I’m not going to tell anybody. I promise. You did the right thing to get it off your chest. The worst part I is over.”

“I don’t know what my parents would do if they found out,” he mumbled as he turned his head back toward the altar.

Neither did I.

I ferried the pans of Sole Florentine out to the church kitchen and heated the oven. Around twenty minutes before noon, members of the Board of Theological Examiners began to arrive. Father Olson whisked through the parish hall first. He was in something of a state, going on about the one laywoman on the committee having a stroke and what were they going to do now? Canonically, the committee had to have twelve members to conduct interviews of candidates for the priesthood in December; the same group would administer the oral ordination exams in April. Father Olson pulled on his beard, Moses in distress. If he didn’t find a competent replacement soon, the feminists would pressure the bishop and he’d be in hot water. I wanted to ask him why, when men were looking for a woman to do anything, they assumed they’d have a problem with competence. Perhaps the real worry was that they’d find somebody who was more competent than they were.

“Oh, dear,” Father Olson was wailing, “why did this have to happen just when I’ve been named head of the committee?” He slumped morosely into one of the chairs I had just set up. “I really don’t know what to do. I just don’t even know where to begin.”

Although I thought a prayer for the stroke victim might be in order, I murmured only, “Start by resetting the table” to his unhearing ears. He traipsed unhappily off to the office while I removed the twelfth place setting. The two laymen on the committee came in and sat next to each other. Both had an air of quiet seriousness, as if they were awaiting instructions. The first group of priests plunged through the heavy doors like a gaggle of blackbirds, laughing and jostling and telling clerical Halloween jokes. What do you get when you cross a bat with an evangelical? Heads waggled. You get a hymn that sticks to the roof of your mouth. The two laymen exchanged looks. This was not their idea of a joke. I served a tray of triangles of sourdough toast spread with glistening pesto. Father Olson made his somber appearance.

“Olson!” one of the blackbirds shrieked. “You’re doing trick-or-treat as a priest!”

Father Olson chuckled patronizingly, then intoned the blessing. I hustled around with the sole while the meeting began. The food elicited numerous compliments. While the news of the stroke victim was being relayed, the priest of the bat joke even ventured jocularly that I should be the replacement on the committee.

“Then you could bring food to every meeting!” he said in an astonished tone, as if he seldom had such great ideas.

It’s a compliment, I reminded myself as I quick-stepped out to the kitchen for the Sorry Cake. When I returned, Father Olson stared at me and ruminated. Perhaps he was reviewing his standards of competence in the light of culinary prowess.

“You do have some experience as a Sunday school teacher ,” he murmured as if we were in the middle of an interview.

I nodded and doled out large pieces of cake.

“We are looking to see that the education of seminarians is complete before they begin to minister to others. What are your academic qualifications, Goldy?”

“I’ll send you a resume.”

“Tell me,” he continued, unperturbed, “how would you define faith?”

“What is this, a test?” Careful, careful, I warned myself. After all, Brad Marensky had had enough faith in me to make me his confessor. And if this group would ever pay, I could always use more bookings. “Well,” I said with a bright smile while they all listened attentively, “I have faith that if I put chocolate cake in the oven, it’s going to rise.” There were a few ripples of laughter. Encouraged, I slapped down my tray and put my hand on my hip. “I have faith that if I cater to any group, even a church group, they’re going to pay me.” Guffaws erupted from the two laymen. “Faith is like. . ,” and then I saw Schulz in my mind’s eye. “Faith is like falling in love. After it happens, you change. You act differently with faith. You’re confident, con fidem,” I concluded with what I hoped was an erudite lift of the eyebrows. In heaven, my Latin teacher put a jewel in my crown. I picked up the tray.

“Ah, Lonergan,” said one of the priests. Father Olson looked as if he were about to have an orgasm. He cried, “You’ve just paraphrased a prominent Jesuit theologian. Oh, Goldy, we’d love to have you on our committee! I had no idea you were so … learned.”

I bathed them all in a benevolent smile. “You’d be surprised at what a caterer can figure out.”

I hightailed it home as soon as the dishes were done, so I could get started on my next assignment of the day. Father Olson was in a state of high excitement, for all the priests had credited him with giving me such a good theological education. I made him promise that if I did cater to the ecclesiastical heavyweights, I would be paid standard food-service rates. Father Olson waved his hands, muttered about the diocesan office, and said something along the lines of money being forthcoming. Good, I said, so was my contract. Education was nice; practicality, essential.

Arch had left me a surprise note in the mailbox. Mom, it said, Have a great Halloween. Be careful! I will be, too. Forgot to tell you, I got a B on a social studies test. Love, Arch

When I got inside, the phone was ringing: Audrey Coopersmith. Would it be all right if Heather came down to the Tattered Cover with us? She was supposed to go with a friend, but that hadn’t worked out. Of course, I said. Audrey said they’d be over in fifteen minutes.

The computer disks! In the rush with the committee, I had completely forgotten them. I pulled the stolen disks Brad had given me out of my apron pocket. Each label was hand-printed with the word Andrews. Call Schulz or see if I … oh, what the heck. I tried to boot first one, then the other, on my kitchen computer. No luck. I pulled out the platters of food for the bookstore reading and phoned Schulz. His machine picked up. I left a three-fold message: A confidential source had just given me Keith Andrews’ computer disks; I would be catering to the prep school crowd tonight at the bookstore; and would he like a little trick-or- treat at my house afterward?

The doorbell rang: the Coopersmiths. As usual, Audrey clomped in first while her daughter hung back, skeptically assessing the surroundings. Two spots of color flamed on Audrey’s cheeks. Knowing her ex-husband was on a cruise with the long-term mistress, I couldn’t imagine what new crisis would bring such anger.

“You okay?” I asked unwisely.

“I have had it with that bitch Ferrell,” Audrey spat out.

“Now what?” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Heather approach the platters of food on the counter next to the computer.

“Do you know what college she recommended for Heather? Bennington! Bennington! What does she think we are, hippies?”

“It’s unstructured,” murmured Heather over her shoulder.

“She’s getting a kickback,” Audrey fumed. “I just know it. Ferrell recommends some college to the school’s best students, and the college gives her – -“

“What is this?” exclaimed Heather.

Oh, damn. One Andrews disk was still in the computer, one was on the counter. I’d never make it as a Republican; I couldn’t cover up a thing.

“How did you get this?” demanded Heather. Her pale eyes narrowed behind the pink-tinted glasses.

“I … don’t know,” I said, fumbling. I can’t say.”

“You stole it,” she accused me. “Nobody can put anything down at that school without it getting lifted.”

Not anymore, I longed to say. “Please don’t give me a hard time,” I chided the girl gently. “Somebody gave Keith’s disks to me because I found him that night and because Arch was threatened. They thought the disks might help. I can’t make hide nor hair out of them and I’m just going to hand them over to the cops.”

“Huh,” grunted Heather. Disbelief was heavy in her voice.

“What is it?” Audrey was momentarily distracted from her harangue against Miss Ferrell. I took the disk out of the drive and slipped it into its sleeve. Audrey picked up the other one from the counter. “Oh, my God,” she said with a sharp intake of breath, “where did you get this?”

“Never mind.” I reached over and deftly unplugged the computer. The screen flashed and went blank. “The police will deal with it.” I slipped the disks into my purse.

“They won’t deal with it if they don’t use WordPerfect,” Heather announced smugly.

“You see how smart she is?” Audrey’s voice gushed pride.

“We need to hit the road,” I replied. And with that we began trucking platters of goodies out to the van. But if I thought Audrey was going to relinquish the subject of the superior and underappreciated intelligence of her daughter, I was sadly mistaken. As the van sped down I-70 toward Denver, Audrey ordered Heather to tell me about her summer internship at a Boulder engineering firm, Amalgamated Aerospace. It was a complicated thing dealing with a simulator. To me, virtual reality was something you dealt with when you did your finances. To Heather, it was something quite different.

“I was doing Mars,” Heather began in a thin, superior tone.

“This is why she should be going to MIT, not Bennington,” interjected Audrey. Did this imply MIT students were like Martians? Best not to ask.

“It was an astronaut-training exercise,” Heather prattled on, “and I was working as an assistant to a programmer in the software department.”

“Isn’t this wonderful!” her mother exclaimed. “I told her to put this in the essay. They’ll have to take her. Second in her class. You know… now.” An awkward silence descended on us.

Heather said crisply, “Are you going to tell this story or am I, Mother? Because I wouldn’t want to interrupt you.”

“Go ahead, dear, I know Goldy really wants to hear it.”

Goldy really didn’t want to hear it, but never mind. There was a volcanic sigh from Heather. We were clearly testing her superior intelligence to the limit.

Heather rolled out the words quickly, as if she were a recording put on seventy-eight. “We used photographs taken by the Viking I and Viking II Mars Landers. We developed 800 gigabytes of video image data so that simulated real-time viewing of the Martian surface was possible when the virtual reality simulator display device was in place.”

“Simulator display device?” I ventured.

“We used a modified F-16 helmet,” she explained tartly. “Anyway, when you put on the helmet, you saw Mars. Look to the left, red rocks of the Martian landscape to the left. Look to the right, red rocks of the Martian landscape to the right.” She sighed again.

“Wow!” I said, impressed. “Then what?”

“The programmer was laid off while he was viewing the surface of Mars. The President postponed the project until 2022, when I’ll be forty-eight, the programmer will be sixty-eight, and the President will be dead.” Sigh. “I think I should go to Bennington.”

We all silently contemplated that brutal prospect. Then Audrey said miserably, “I can’t afford Bennington.”

Heather harrumphed. “You can’t afford MIT.” Audrey swung around and glared at her daughter. “Do you have to contradict everything? I think I should have a say in where my daughter goes to school. I’ve earned that, haven’t I?”

“Oh, Mother.”

16

When we arrived at the intersection of First Avenue and Milwaukee, I cast a fleeting glance across the street at Neiman-Marcus.

“Did you two know the bookstore building used to house a department store?” Audrey asked brightly as I. wound up the concrete ramp to the same entrance I’d used the night of the stir-fry.

Heather harrumphed. She hadn’t said a word since the flap over tuition money.

“Yes,” I mused, “I know about when this place was a store…” Did l ever. In fact, I’d often reflected that my acquaintance with different establishments of commerce depended on my financial status at any given stage of life. Neusteter’s had been an upscale department store during my tenure as a doctor’s wife. I had made frequent visits to the jewelry, cosmetics, shoe, dress, and suit departments. Not visits suffused with happiness, I might add, although, I used to think, for example, that getting my hair done for an astronomical sum in the top-floor salon would make me feel better. But it never did. On my last visit there, I winced whenever the hairdresser touched the back of my scalp, because that was where John Richard had slammed me into a wall the night before. Now I much preferred a blunt cut from Mark the Barber in Aspen Meadow. Freedom cost eight bucks.

I firmly put these memories out of my mind as we unloaded the first trays of concentrically arranged Chocolate-Dipped Biscotti and strawberries. Audrey said the doors were already unlocked, and led the way to the tiny kitchen. The whole area was no more than five feet by five feet, but it would do. In fact, it was so small, we could start the coffee brewing without extension cords. Thank God.

“What do I do if the lights go out?” I demanded of Audrey when I’d filled the large pot with water and fresh coffee.

“The lights?” Her look was puzzled.

“The last time you and I catered this group – Just tell me if there’s an auxiliary lighting system.”

“Come with me.” Audrey spoke with the resigned tone people use to deal with needlessly worried bosses. She guided me through a maze of shelves to an empty clerk’s desk. The desktop was a jumble of books and papers. Set at an angle was one of those complicated phones with flashing buttons and finely printed instructions on paging and transferring calls. Audrey reached deftly under the desk, yanked, and brought out a flashlight. “There’s one under every employee’s desk in this entire store, in case a thunderstorm or power failure takes the lights out. Satisfied?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling dumb. “Thanks.” Before we could get back to the subject of food, the trade book buyer, a plump woman with papery white skin and curly black hair, came up and introduced herself; Miss Nell Kaplan. While Audrey replaced the flashlight, I invited Miss Kaplan into the kitchen to taste a biscotto. To be sociable, I had one too. Chocolate oozed around the crunch of almonds and cookie. Wonderful, Miss Kaplan and I both agreed.

“The chairs are all set up,” Miss Kaplan informed us. “Now all we have to do is find the books the author is going to autograph. You wouldn’t think this happens, but it does. Would you consider sharing that recipe for biscotti?”

“My pleasure.”

“You should write a cookbook.”

“One of these days.”

Miss Ferrell click-clacked into the tiny kitchen, wearing a black tent dress. A matching black scarf was wound around her bun of hair. I immediately worried how to keep her away from the wrath of Audrey, who was still Bennington-fixated, but was saved from that task by Miss Kaplan. They had found the books, she announced, and now she needed only a returning Audrey to help her open the chilled wine.

Her face bright with anticipation, Miss Ferrell said, “I’m so glad we’re finally getting back on track with our college advisory nights.” When I made a vague acknowledging gesture, she added in a lower tone, “Has Julian told you his news?”

“What news?”

She frowned and wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps Julian should be the one to tell you. We just found out this afternoon.” She giggled. “What a trick-or-treat!”

Worry nagged behind my eyes. I thought of Julian’s haggard face, the piles of review books. “You… wanted to meet with me tomorrow morning to talk about his college choices. If something has changed, I … think I’d like to hear about it now. If that’s okay.”

She put a finger mysteriously to her lips and guided me out to the open area where our meeting was to be held. Chairs were set in neat rows facing a table and podium. A bookstore employee was arranging bright, fragrant flowers at the table where the speaker, author of Climbing the Ivy League, was going to sign books. Apart from that we were alone.

Miss Ferrell leaned toward me. “He’s been given a full scholarship.”

I jerked back in astonishment. “Who? Julian? To what school?”

“Any school. He can go wherever he wants now. Wherever he gets in. Perkins just got the news this afternoon from the College Savings Bank in Princeton. Eighty thousand dollars wired to an account for Julian Teller.” She rolled her eyes. “From an anonymous donor.”

“Does Julian know who this donor is?” I said, confused. General Farquhar, who had given Julian the Range Rover, was in prison and unable to do anything with his money, which in any event had been largely spent on legal fees. I couldn’t think of any other potential benefactor, unless it was a wealthy person at the school. But why a scholarship for Julian? I was utterly baffled. Unless someone wanted something from him… My mind rocketed around wildly. Was Julian being bribed to do something? To keep something quiet? I closed my eyes to stop the chattering in my head. In the face of recent events at the school, paranoia loomed.

“Is Julian here?” I asked wishfully.

Miss Ferrell’s smile faded. Perhaps my response was not what she had anticipated. “I’m sure I don’t know. What’s the matter? Aren’t you thrilled?”

“I am, I am,” I said unconvincingly. In true paranoid fashion, I didn’t feel I could trust anyone. “It’s just that … I need to talk to him. Now I must go tend to the food. Happy Halloween.” I nipped back to the kitchenette, my mind reeling.

Heather sidled up while I was arranging the fruit. She straightened her thick pink glasses and whispered, “You didn’t tell Miss Ferrell how mad my mom was, did you?”

“No, no, no …” Why did these teenagers, first Brad and now Heather, seem to think I was the resident tattler? Perhaps paranoia is contagious. “Miss Ferrell had something else to tell me,” I told her.

“I heard about Julian’s scholarship. It’s supposed to be very hush-hush.” Heather gave me a quizzical look. “One of the kids said maybe it was you, but then the headmaster’s son said, Nah, you were poor.”

Audrey rescued me from commenting on this unto-ward assessment of my financial state by announcing that we had a big problem where we were supposed to be setting up. I was saved from asking her what it was when I heard the all too familiar sound of parents’ voices raised in heated dispute.

“Oh, come on, Hank. Nobody’s heard of Occidental.” Stan Marensky. “You must be joking!”

Audrey whispered to me, “I’ll bet Hank Dawson just heard of Occidental himself. He probably thinks it’s a Chinese restaurant. Or an insurance policy, maybe.”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to think what to do. The Dawsons, the Marenskys, and Macguire Perkins stood together near the signing table. The mothers – short, crimson-suited Caroline and thinly elegant, fur-coated Rhoda – were eyeing each other like two wild animals in a life-and-death standoff. The fathers – lanky Stan and squat, beefy Hank – stood stiffly, bristling. All were glaring, and the air around them crackled with hostility. Macguire, as usual, had his eyes half closed and was observing the verbal brickbats fly back and forth as if the conversation were some kind of sporting event.

“You just don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hank Dawson spat out. He clenched his fists at his sides; I was afraid he would raise them at any moment. “It’s on U.S. News & World Report’s list of the top twenty-five liberal arts colleges. Greer is extraordinarily gifted, in the top ten percent of her class. That’s more than you can say for Brad. What does he do, anyway? Besides play soccer, I mean.”

To my horror, Hank turned and winked at me, as if I somehow shared this assessment. I recoiled and looked around for Brad Marensky, whom I had not seen since our encounter in church. But when I caught the teenager’s eye, he turned away.

“You know, Stan,” Hank went on, rocking back and forth on his heels and looking up into Stan’s lean face with a smug grin, “you could always give the director of admissions at Stanford ‘a mink coat, but I think it’s too hot out there.”

“I’m getting so tired of this from you! We used to be friends! And really, you don’t know the first thing about colleges.” Stan was white with anger. “Jam for the Stanford rep! What a laugh!”

“Oh, yeah?” shrilled Hank. His face flushed the color of a cherry tomato. “Greer’s sixth-grade teacher said she tested out at the highest intelligence level they’d ever found.”

“Brad has been in gifted and talented programs since he was eight. And he’s an athlete, named all-state in soccer and basketball. Not just girls’ volleyball,” rasped Stan, his nostrils flaring. “You think you can improve Greer’s chances with this stupid campaign of yours? Does the world know that Hank Dawson flunked out of the University of Michigan? You don’t have a credential to your name.”

“Oh, shit,” muttered Macguire Perkins. “Oh, man,” he said, looking around for Brad, who had sunk into a nearby chair rather than witness the intensifying conflict.

“Honey, stop,” protested Caroline Dawson. But both men stood their ground. At any moment, someone was going to get punched in the nose. I tentatively offered my tray of biscotti to the little group. All ignored me Stan Marensky smiled largely. His tall body loomed over Hank Dawson’s. “You’re just jealous because you know Brad’s gotten better grades than Greer – “

“Man, who cares?” interrupted Macguire Perkins.

“Shut up!” both fathers cried simultaneously to the headmaster’s son.

Macguire raised his palms. “Whoa! I’m outta here.” He slunk off. Brad Marensky slumped miserably and put his head in his hands.

Hank squinted up at Stan Marensky. He was breathing hard. Instead of addressing the jealousy question, he used Stan’s own mocking tone to respond. “Six generations of Dawsons have attended the University of Michigan. That’s more than you can say for the royal Russian Marenskys, I’m sure.”

Stan Marensky grunted in disgust. His fists clenched.

I had resolved not to get involved in this, of course, but perhaps I could get us out of this.

“Please, men,” I said amicably, wafting biscotti under their noses – I’m a great believer in the peace-making abilities of good food. “The kids will get the wrong idea of what college is all about if you don’t quit arguing. You’re both winners. I mean, remember the time when the Broncos – “

“Who asked you?” bellowed Hank Dawson as if I had unexpectedly betrayed him. He certainly was not in the mood for Bronco talk. Well, hey! I was just doing my referee imitation. I whisked off to set down the tray. Audrey and I had food to set out, conflict or no.

In catering weddings, I had discovered that there is absolutely no time to become overly involved in arguments between clients while you are trying to serve. To my great relief, and in the manner of wedding receptions, the Marenskys and the Dawsons now settled on opposite sides of the meeting area. More students and parents joined us. Audrey and I kept the trays filled and tended to the glasses. Miss Ferrell, who had watched the bitter exchange between the two sets of parents but sagely declined to interfere, pointed Julian out to me when he sauntered up the stairs to the third floor. I handed my tray to Audrey and rushed over to him.

“Congratulations,” I gushed. “I heard. This is so – “

But the hard look in his eyes stopped me short. His face was cold with defiance.

“What is it?” I stammered. “I thought you’d be ecstatic.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Even in the catering business, you know there’s no free lunch.”

“I’m happy for you anyway,” I said lamely. The initial doubts I’d had about the scholarship loomed.

Julian nodded grimly and walked over to join the chatting students and parents. Several members of the crowd took their seats in response to Headmaster Perkins’ agitated appearance at the table where the evening’s speaker, a young fellow with wire-rimmed glasses and slicked-down blond hair, had just settled himself next to an enormous pile of books.

“I think we should have a moment’s silence for our” – Headmaster Perkins gushed into the microphone – “our classmate and friend, Keith Andrews.” There was shuffling and rearranging of chairs. Along with the noise from the customers on other floors, it was not exactly silence.

Miss Ferrell stood to introduce the author. Now, I would have thought that a Halloween speaker would at least have had a few lighthearted things to say about how scary the college-application process was, or something along those lines. But when the blond fellow regaled us with no jokes, and instead began with a fluttering hand gesture and the line, “When I was at Harvard…” I knew we were in trouble.

There would be no more serving until the man had finished his spiel and the question-and-answer period was over, so I slipped around to the back of the room and found Audrey.

“Any way I can get out of here without creating a fuss?”

“You can’t go by the main staircase, they’d all see you. Where do you want to go?”

“Cookbooks?” Any port in a storm.

She led me around to the back of the third floor and then circled the room through another maze of bookshelves. Eventually we made our way to the other side of the main carpeted staircase from the speaker. Audrey stopped in front of a door taped with a photo of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.

I said, “Not a cookbook by this guy.”

“We’re in Crime, silly,” Audrey said quietly so as not to disturb the stultifyingly boring speaker, who was declaiming, “College is an investment, like real estate. Location, location, location!”

Audrey whispered to me, “Go down two flights and you’ll come out in cookbooks.”

“What’s on that window, a poster of Julia Child?”

“They just do it up as a refrigerator door.” She glanced over at the speaker. “I’ll handle things. Better not be gone more than thirty minutes, though.”

I thanked her for being such a great assistant and pushed through the Silence of the Lambs door. It closed behind me with a decisive thud. With the guilty enjoyment of escaping duty, I quickly descended the concrete stairway. Once I made it down to the cookbook section, I felt immediately at home. I searched out a recipe for piroshki, then flipped through a marvelously illustrated book on the cuisine of Italian hill towns. Educating Your Palate was the name of one of that cookbook’s subsections. I sat in an armchair next to one of the windows.

My uniform-coated reflection looked back at me, cookbook in hand. Educate your palate, huh? I had never had a formal education in cooking; I had taught myself to cook from books. But I made my living at it. Naturally, the courses I’d had on Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare hadn’t helped, although they’d been enjoyable, except for the Milton. And needless to say, the psychological savvy needed for the business had no referent in any of my papers on the early thinking of Freud.

But so what. I was educated, self-proclaimed. Period. With this delicious insight I walked over to the first-floor bank of registers to buy the Italian cookbook, then realized I’d left my purse upstairs. I reached into my apron pocket, where I always kept a twenty in case someone had to run out for ingredients, and had the satisfaction of paying for the book with cash earned from catering.

When I pushed past Hannibal Lecter again, Tom Schulz stood waiting near the door. The speaker said, “One last question,” and moments later the parents were milling aggressively around and standing in line to have their books signed by the expert. Audrey and several other staff members began folding up the chairs.

“I’m glad to see you,” I said to Schulz. I looked around at the breakdown of the room. “I really should help them.”

Schulz shook his head. “The food’s gone, the people are leaving, and you have some disks to give me so I can deliver them to the Sheriff’s department tonight.”

“Oh, my God,” I said suddenly. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Why hadn’t I taken them down to the first floor with me? I fled into the kitchen. No purse. I rushed back out to Audrey.

“Seen my purse?” I demanded.

“Yes, yes,” she answered primly, and snapped a metal chair shut. “But don’t ever leave it out like that again, Goldy. Kids at that school have a terrible reputation for stealing. The only time I bring a purse is when I need my wallet with all my cards. Otherwise, I wear my keys.” She went to a closet and returned with my purse. I almost snatched it from her. The computer disks were inside.

I handed Schulz the disks. He hadn’t mentioned coming over to my house later. Perhaps he didn’t want to. I immediately felt embarrassed, as if I’d overstepped some invisible but important boundary.

Once again he was reading my mind. Leaning toward me, he whispered, “Can I meet you at your house in ninety minutes?”

“Of course. Will you be able to stay for a while?”

He gave me such a tender, incredulous look: What do you think? that I turned away. When I looked back he was saluting me as he sauntered out the third-floor exit. Julian had gone, presumably to his friend Neil’s house; the Marenskys and Dawsons had disappeared. Chalk another one up for Greer not helping with catering cleanup. Maybe that wasn’t required for Occidental.

Audrey and I cleared the trash and washed dishes. My heart ached for her as she recited all the latest cruel deeds foisted on her by Carl Coopersmith’s insidious lawyer. Finally, but with some guilt, I told her I was expecting a guest at my home momentarily. With Heather’s begrudging help, the three of us loaded our boxes into the van. In an extremely casual tone Audrey inquired, “What was that policeman doing at the store tonight?”

“I told you, I was giving him those disks.”

“It’s like he doesn’t trust us,” she said darkly.

“Well, can you blame him?” came Heather’s sharp voice from the backseat.

“When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” Audrey snapped.

“Oh, Mom.”

And we drove in unhappy silence all the way back to their house in Aspen Meadow.

Plumes of exhaust drifted up from the tailpipe of Schulz’s car when I pulled up by the curb in front of my home.

“Everyone will see you if you park here,” I said when he had rolled down his window.

“Oh, yeah? I wasn’t aware I was doing anything illegal.” He hauled out a plastic bag. It said BRUNSWICK BOWLING BALLS.

“What did the disks say?”

“Talk about it inside.”

I pushed the alarm buttons and opened the door. The bowling ball bag yielded a bottle of VSOP cognac. In a cabinet I found a couple of liqueur glasses that John Richard had not broken on one of his rampages. As we sat in my kitchen and sipped the cognac, Schulz said he wanted to hear about my evening first. I told him about the bookstore spats, and about Macguire Perkins getting in the middle of it. I also told him about my suspicion concerning Macguire’s use of steroids.

“Was that what Keith’s newspaper article was about?” I asked.

“No,” he said pensively, “it wasn’t.” I toyed with my glass. Relax, I ordered myself. But Arch’s problems at school and Julian’s troubling anxiety seemed to be in the air, even though neither of the boys was at home. And despite the afternoon interlude with Schulz the day of the spider bite, I was not used to being alone with him in my house. At night.

Schulz refilled my glass. “How about Julian? Did he get involved in the argument at the bookstore?”

“Oh, no.” I brightened. “Good news on that front, in fact.” I told him about Julian’s scholarship.

“No kidding.” Schulz seemed both pleased and intrigued. “That’s interesting. Who gave him the money?”

“No one knows. I’m wondering if it’s some kind of bribe.”

He sipped his cognac. “A bribe. For what? Did you ask him?” I told him I had not. He pondered that for a minute, then said, “Now tell me how you got those disks.”

“Can’t, sorry, they were given to me in confidence. Do they contain evidence? I mean, is it something you’ll be able to use?”

“I don’t know how.” But he reached inside the Brunswick bag and handed me some folded papers. “I got a printout of Keith’s article. The rest was notes for a paper on Dostoyevski. The other disk had a list of expenses from his visits to ten colleges. The article sums up the trips.” Seeing my puzzled expression, Schulz added, “That’s what Keith was going to expose, Goldy. His personal views on college education as he’d already experienced it. I wanted you to take a look at it, but it just looks like his opinions.”

If that was all it was, I told him I would read it in the morning. I was too tired even to read the word midterm tonight. “If it’s just Keith’s opinions on what’s going on in higher education in the world at large, what’s the big deal?”

“I don’t know. But nobody I can find seems to have had the slightest idea what he was researching for that article. Sometimes people are more afraid of what they think you’re going to expose than they ever would be if they knew exactly what you were going to expose. You fear what you don’t know.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said as I drained the last of the cognac in my glass. Heady stuff.

“Like with this smoke stunt. Someone wants you to think you’re going to be hurt.”

“Marla broke her leg,” I pointed out.

“She may have gotten off easy.” He put his glass down. His face was very grim. “I know I’ve said this a few times already, Miss G., but I’d feel a lot better if you’d all move out, quietly, until we solve this murder.”

I blinked at him. How many times had I run away in fear? Too many. The running part of my life was over, and 1 was not going to budge.

17

Schulz moved restlessly in his chair. I poured us some more cognac and had the uncomforting thought that if we got really drunk, we wouldn’t even notice if someone smashed another window or stopped up every chimney in the neighborhood.

I sipped and looked at the clock. Ten o’clock. The odd feeling of being alone in my home with Schulz brought full wakefulness despite the fact that catering in the evening usually exhausted me. My mind traveled back to the Marenskys and the Dawsons, Brad Marensky morose and silent, Macguire Perkins embarrassed when ordered to shut up. When our tiny glasses were again empty, Schulz stood and walked out to the living room. I followed. The place still smelled faintly of smoke, and the pale yellow walls were the color of toasted marshmallow. In the near future I would have to hire someone to do a cleanup. Schulz got down on one knee to peer up the chimney.

“Any ideas? Did you ever hear anything out on the roof?”

“No ideas, no weird sounds. My theory is that this is the same person who did the rock and the snake. I wish I knew who was so pissed off with me. Arbitration would be cheaper than making glass repairs and paying for professional cleaning.”